Beethoven Savall

After the critical success of the first volume of Beethoven’s symphonies, Jordi Savall now offers us from the Sixth to the Ninth.This latest publication crowns a nearly two-year world tour and confirms the extent to which the director renews our vision of these most famous works. The Concert des Nations shows that it also knows how to magnify the repertoire of the early 19th century, which will be confirmed by a forthcoming Schubert album.

For this set of Beethoven's first five symphonies, Jordi Savall began with the fundamental idea of recovering the original sound of the orchestra and tempo as the composer imagined them. All the orchestral work was performed with instruments corresponding to those used at the time, and by 55-60 musicians, a number similar to that arranged by the composer. 35 players were selected from Le Concert des Nations alongside 20 young musicians from different countries across world.

After Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert, Jordi Savall continues his journey into the 19th century with the Italian Symphony of Felix Mendelssohn, a composer he records for the first time. He delivers 2 versions of the work: the one which was performed at the wolrdwide premiere in 1833 and the revised one from 1834. The most conspicuous changes are to be found in the last tree movements. The comparison of the two scores and the performance on period instruments take us as close to Mendelssohn's work and original intention as we will ever get. Thanks to Jordi Savall's insightful conducting, there is still something to discover in Mendelssohn's most famous symphony.

Jordi Savall releases his first Schubert album, following a recording of Beethoven’s complete symphonies which largely contributed to renew our vision of the early Romantic repertoire. The Catalan maestro delivers a recording freed from the weight of past traditions to underline the dynamics, the section balance and the timbres that are required in this repertoire.

With the Missa solemnis, Beethoven created one of the most haunting settings of the liturgy of the Mass, whose premiere, however, already took place in the concert hall and not in a church setting.

For approximately a thousand years, from 700 to 1797, the city of Venice played a pre-eminent role in the Mediterranean and in the history of the world. Situated in a lagoon fed by two rivers where a number of small, precarious settlements had grown up along the coast, Venice was founded by the Byzantines, who made it a crossroads between the East and the West. This essentially aquatic city, with its network of canals, attracted merchants of many different origins who worked towards a common goal: to create a thriving hub of business, exchange and interests.