Le Cartel Des Fraudes

As early as 1761, a year before his masterpiece Orfeo ed Euridice, Gluck largely renewed another musical genre, the ballet, with his adaptation of a work by Molière for Viennese audiences: Don Juan. Another work, Sémiramis, followed a year later. These two works are innovative in that they offer, for the first time, a coherent narrative in which all the resources of the orchestra are put at the service of expressiveness. Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations bring out all the nuances of these scores, reminding us that a quarter of a century before Mozart, the stages of Europe were treated to all the evocative power of music by another outstanding figure: Christoph Willibald Gluck.

Marais's Alcione is the last great 'tragedy' in music from the reign of Louis XIV. It is a total spectacle at the crossroads of the 17th and 18th centuries, from which it takes the mythological source, it's praise of the sovereign's glory and the literary requirement to combine choreography and stage movements. Jordi Savall rediscovered this work and brought it back to life for the first stage production in Paris since 1771.

Jordi Savall's exemplary performance of Handel's Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks is among the finest available on disc: refined and precise, but very big, with blood-stirring grandeur. This is just the kind of extroverted, rousing presentation that best highlights the music's open-air ceremonial function. Savall's Le Concert des Nations is essentially a chamber orchestra with double or triple winds, but the sound he elicits from the group is majestic and surprisingly powerful. The playing is crisp and the rhythmic articulation bracing, but the sound is never brash. In fact, more often than not it is seductively sensual, a heady integration of precision and supple, shapely phrasing. Handel left no authoritative edition of the score of Water Music and it has traditionally been divided into three suites, but Savall reorders the material into two suites, a decision that makes more sense in terms of key relationships and that sounds entirely satisfying.

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.

Jordi Savall is painting Monteverdi in the colours of the Mediterranean. The Catalan maestro has entrusted the title role of this foundational work of Western music to a remarkable baritone: the magnificent Marc Mauillon embodies Orfeo, his resonant and ductile voice in perfect unison with the conductor’s musical vision. Here, a warm performance and rich sound reign supreme!

Tant au niveau des formes que des couleurs musicales, “L’Orchestre de Louis XIII” marque la transition entre deux grandes époques : la fin de la Renaissance et l’entrée dans le Baroque. Ces musiques de cour aux saveurs populaires, toujours imaginatives et colorées, sont à la recherche constante de souplesse et de grâce, de grandeur et d’élégance. Elles constituent les éléments caractéristiques du style typiquement français qui va rayonner à travers toute l’Europe jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIème siècle.

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. The main goal was to reflect, in our 21st century, all the richness and beauty of these symphonies, through a true balance between colors and the quality of the orchestra's natural sound.

Lully, Handel, Charpentier, Scheidt, Biber, Schein, Cabanilles, Dumanoir, Rosenmüller, Jenkins, Cererols, Blow: this double SACD-book gathers the who’s-who of European music, to mention but a few, of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries. Deeply affected by the Thirty Years War as well as the War of Spanish Succession, the finest music inspired by this turmoil is vividly performed by Jordi Savall and his ensembles. The set ends with a fantastic and complete performance of Handel’s 'Jubilate Deo'.