Founder and conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini’s early music ensemble Concerto Italiano came into existence in 1984. Its birth coincides with that of the revival of early music in Italy and is, in no small part, responsible for it. Monteverdi, Bach and Vivaldi are the main composers which have inspired the group in honoring an appreciation of the language of Baroque music, making a new aesthetic and musical rhetoric available to a fresh audience.

Concerto Italiano made its Carnegie Hall debut in 2017 and has toured China, Japan, Australia, and many European cities, performing Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers, L’Orfeo and L’incoronazione di Poppea. In 2016 the ensemble made its debut in Australia and New Zealand performing Monteverdi’s Vespers.

Over the course of its history, the ensemble has appeared at major festivals and in venues throughout the European continent: Utrecht (Oude Muziek Festival), Rotterdam (De Doelen, De Singel), Antwerpen e Leuven (Flandern Festival), London (Lufthansa Festival, Queen Elisabeth Hall), Edinburgh (Edinburgh Festival), Wien (Konzerthaus), Graz (Styriarte), Amsterdam (Concertgebouw), Bruxelles (Festival de Wallonie, Flandern Festival, Societè Philarmonique), Madrid (Liceo de Camara), Barcelona (Festival de Musica Antigua, Palau de la Musica), Oslo (Chamber Music Festival), Paris (Citè de la Musique, Theatre de la Ville, Theatre des Champs Elysèes), Montpellier (Festival de Radio France), Metz (Arsenal), Köln (Conservatorio e WDR), Roma (Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Accademia Filarmonica Romana), Milano (Musica e Poesia a San Maurizio), Spoleto (Festival dei Due Mondi), Palermo (Festival Scarlatti), Bologna (Bologna Festival), Napoli (Teatro San Carlo e Associazione Scarlatti), and Aldeburgh, Perugia, Lyon, Glasgow, Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Innsbruck, Valencia, Bilbao, Seville, San Sebastian, Salamanca, Santander, Ravenna, Ferrara, Torino, Warsaw, Krakow, Bergen, Vantaa and Turku (Finland), among others. International audiences have also been privileged to hear the ensemble, including those in Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Buenos Aires (Teatro Colon), Rio de Janeiro (Teatro São Paolo), New York (Metropolitan Museum, Lincoln Center), Washington DC (Library of Congress), and Tokyo.

Concerto Italiano has recently been involved in performing the complete Monteverdi opera cycle at La Scala (Milano) and Opera Garnier (Paris), in collaboration with stage director Bob Wilson. The group has also toured with RIAS Kammerchor in an ambitious program of Roman sacred music and Alessandro Scarlatti’s oratorio Caino. It records regularly for the Naïve label. Recent releases include Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, a collection of sacred music by Alessandro Scarlatti, Monteverdi’s complete 8th Book of Madrigals, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, and Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers and “Selva Morale e Spirituale”. The impressive array of critical awards received for these recordings confirms the outstanding quality of their performances, now recognized as a unique force in the interpretation of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century music. After several decades the recordings of Concerto Italiano are still considered by critics and public alike to be the definitive standards of the Baroque revival and style.

November 18, 2022: Concerto Italiano Releases Album with Rinaldo Alessandrini Titled ‘Monteverdi: Concerto. Settimo libro de’ madrigali’
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March 25, 2022: Concerto Italiano Releases Albulm with Rinaldo Alessandrini Titled ‘Vivaldi 12 Concertos Op. 3 ‘Estros Armonico’, Bach Keyboards Arrangements’
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CONCERTO ITALIANO/ALESSANDRINI REVIEW - PURITY AND EXPRESSIVENESS AS NATURAL AS BREATHING
“There is nothing contrived, previous or histrionic about the way in which they present Monteverdi, and their scrupulous attention to the weight and meaning of every syllable is a constant reminder of how much his music relies on the rhythms and colours of the Italian language. You won’t hear it sung any better anywhere today.”
– Andrew Clements, The Guardian

CONCERTO ITALIANO REVIEW — THIS WAS A MASTERCLASS IN MONTEVERDI MAGIC
“…there’s something about the way Alessandrini’s six singers put across these five-part madrigals (the singers working in rotation) that seemed uniquely responsive to the texts. The women, particularly, have hard-edged voices that are perfect for making Monteverdi’s dissonant suspensions bite. But they also fold into the most velvety blend where required.”
– Richard Morrison, The Times

ALESSANDRINI HAS ACHIEVED SOMETHING TRULY OUTSTANDING
“Twenty-eight years in the making, Rinaldo Alessandrini finally completes his wonderful survey of Monteverdi madrigals, and the complete set is a joy to behold.”
– Andrew Clements, The Guardian

RINALDO ALESSANDRINI: THE QUINTESSENCE OF THE TRIO SONATA
Alessandrini arrived to us yesterday with his Concerto Italiano in reduced formation. But what formation! In fact,The performance of baroque music on period instruments expressed a full spectrum of beauty: beauty of the timbres, quality of intonation, suppleness of nuance and balance.
– Christophe Huss, Le Devoir

THE BEST RECORDINGS OF JS BACH’S BRANDENBURG CONCERTOS
Alessandrini never drives the music too hard, bending to the lilt of the dance and prizing supple elasticity and meaningful rhetorical gestures over mechanical rhythms and mindless speeding.

“Every concerto balances the instruments differently. In Nos 1 and 2 the brass grab the limelight and deliver their parts with spittle-rattling glee, while in No. 5 Alessandrini, as soloist, is careful to balance his harpsichord with the gentler solo flute and violin.

This set offers an irresistibly expansive and effusive approach, right down to the immediacy of the recording and the vast breadth of the sound.”
– Oliver Condy, BBC Music Magazine

REVIEW: VARIATIONS ON VARIATIONS
“Alessandrini’s own introductory words are, ‘What you hear makes no pretence at orthodoxy. It is, rather, a divertissement, a subtle intellectual pleasure.’ However, that’s rather playing thins down, because while there is subtlety here, it’s a subtly wrought brilliance that’s far more than mere divertissement.”
– Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Gramophone

THE BEST CLASSICAL MUSIC PERFORMANCES OF 2017
The too-little I heard at Carnegie Hall’s rich February festival, celebrating the Venetian Republic, was all superb, including Vivaldi’s “Juditha Triumphans,” in a performance of Technicolor vividness by Andrea Marcon and the Venice Baroque Orchestra, and an elegantly restrained take on Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” from Rinaldo Alessandrini and Concerto Italiano.
– Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times

BACH ARR ALESSANDRINI: VARIATIONS ON VARIATIONS CD REVIEW – REVELATORY GOLDBERGS AND MORE
“the revelation here is the Goldberg Variations, reimagined as a breathtaking romp. The canons are strictly done, but in the freer variations Rinaldo Alessandrini adds parts at will and dazzles with the virtuosity of his ensemble’s playing.”
– Nicholas Kenyon, The Guardian

ADELAIDE FESTIVAL REVIEW 2017: CONCERTO ITALIANO
“The full-throated vocal intensity of the entire cast brought the familiar story to vivid, pulsating life, forcefully revealing the original purpose of opera as a medium to move the passions of its listeners.

Who could not be moved in the scene when the death of Eurydice is related to Orpheus, or again when Eurydice bids a final farewell to Orpheus and returns to Hades?”
– Stephen Whittington, Adelaide Now

WHAT’S REALLY OLD IS NEW AGAIN, WITH POPPEA FROM CONCERTO ITALIANO AT CARNEGIE HALL
“I must admit that I was a little nervous when I saw the size of the ensemble…but I needn’t have been. As soon as they started playing…I knew that all was right with the world–or, at least, for that moment, with these musicians, in this temple of music.”
– Richard Sasanow, Broadway World

BREATHLESSLY SPIRALING BACH: THE 8 BEST CLASSICAL MUSIC MOMENTS THIS WEEK
“Everyone understandably looks forward to the very end of Monteverdi’s “Poppea” and the aching duet “Pur ti miro.” But with Rinaldo Alessandrini leading the Concerto Italiano in the work at Carnegie Hall, I found myself unexpectedly moved by what came just before: the coronation scene and “A te, sovrana augusta,” the Roman tribunes and consuls’ darkly stirring acclamation of an empress who has risen to power through lust and ambition.”
– Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times

A MUSICAL HANDSHAKE SPANNING CENTURIES: VENICE IN NEW YORK
– Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times