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http://www.amazon.com/Barbara-Strozzi-Primo-Libro-Madrigali/dp/B000006H8R

If there's one pre-20th-century female composer who deserves to escape the "women's music" ghetto, it's Barbara Strozzi, known throughout 17th-century Italy for her virtuoso singing--and the music she wrote to display it. Her First Book of Madrigals for two, three, four and five voices (with texts by her father, a respected poet and dramatist) contains the only substantial music she published for singers other than herself. These madrigals don't have (except in the first soprano part, of course) the dizzying vocal fireworks found in her later music, but they do have vivid word painting and a sense of drama that recall late Monteverdi. The singers of La Venexiana all took part in the extraordinary Monteverdi madrigal recordings by Rinaldo Alessandrini's Concerto Italiano (8th Book); here they display the same natural delivery and pleasing sound but lack a bit of forward momentum (probably the result of not having a conductor). But those Concerto Italiano discs set a fearsomely high standard--La Venexiana's performance is excellent on the whole. --Matthew Westphal