Monteverdi: Jordi Savall

Montserrat Figueras & Jordi Savall - La Voix de l’Emotion - The Voice of Emotion (2012) {2CD Set, Alia Vox AVSA9889}
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© 2012 Alia Vox | AVSA9889
Classical / Vocal / Chamber Music / Medieval / Renaissance

This album gathers highlights from Montserrat Figueras career for the Astrée, DHM, EMI and Alia Vox labels. 5 of the 35 tracks have already been reissued in a portrait album released in the 1990s by Astrée, La 'Voix de l Emotion'. Jordi Savall wanted to keep the same title for this much more comprehensive double album, in tribute to the late Montserrat Figueras, his wife and collaborator of 43 years. 35 year-career: 35 tracks a dazzlingly clear soprano voice, a line of the purest silk, as strong as it was delicate.

This live recording made on January 31, 2002 at the Liceu Theater in Barcelona is already a cornerstone of any Monteverdi discography. Previously only available on DVD from Opus Arte, this multi-channel SACD version reveals the full scale of Jordi Savall's inspiration. Beautifully executed by La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Le Concert des Nations, and a cast of soloists that includes Furio Zanasi, Sara Mingardo, and the late Montserrat Figueras, this is a release to treasure.

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!

Jordi Savall - Monteverdi - Madrigali Guerrieri Et Amorosi, Libro Ottavo (1995) {Astrée-Auvidis E 8546}
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© 1995 Auvidis / Astrée | E 8546
Classical / Baroque / Renaissance

Monteverdi's madrigals were the laboratory in which he sought the connections between music and the emotions, and none are more moving and evocative than those of his eighth and final book, the "Madrigali Guerrieri et Amorosi," (1638). This release offers only a selection, but puts the music's drama in gratifyingly high relief. It's a beautifully sung, ravishingly played and lushly recorded collection, "Madrigali Guerrieri et Amorosi," by Jordi Savall and La Capella Reial de Catalunya (Astree E 8546). Dynamics are supple, coloration is flexible and expressive dissonances are pointed up in a way that gives works like "Lamento della Ninfa" and "Gira il nemico" an unusually vivid edge.

Despite its hefty, hardbound, 300-plus-page book and attendant top price, Jordi Savall's Venezia Millenaria has appeared on commercial sales charts. It's easy to see why: this is one of Savall's most ambitious concepts, covering the promised millennium of the history of the city of Venice, Italy, plus a bit more as a bonus, taking you up to the end of Venice's independence. The book contains enough information that it could serve as the basis for a little travelers' course, but there's also a case to be made for just listening and letting a thousand years of music wash over you.

Jordi Savall - La Barcha d'Amore 1563-1685 - Hespèrion XXI & Le Concert des Nations (2008) {Alia Vox AV 9811}
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© 2008 Alia Vox | AV 9811
Classical / Baroque / Renaissance

This 68-minute program–a compilation of recordings made by Jordi Savall, Montserrat Figueras & Co. during the years 1976 and 2008 (including several selections originally released on dhm and Virgin Classics)–proved one of those purely pleasurable, effortlessly rewarding listening sessions that only rarely come along. We don't often review compilations drawn from multiple recordings made in different venues and over many years–they're so often programmatically disjointed and sonically varied; but in this case it doesn't matter. The music is compatible stylistically and these performers are so consistent in the quality and care and vitality of their performances that, well, what's 30 years or so?

Jordi Savall directs Le Concert des Nations, La Capella Reial de Catalunya and the leading soloists of early opera in a beautiful period production of Monteverdi's favola in musica staged at Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu in 2002. Gilbert Deflo's stage direction reflects the sublime art and imagery found in Mantua's Palazzo Ducale, with its famous Hall of Mirrors, where the opera was first performed in 1607.

Jordi Savall - 25 Years La Capella Reial De Catalunya (2013) {4CD Set Alia Vox AVSA9897}
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© 2013 Alia Vox | AVSA 9897
Classical / Renaissance / Vocal Music / Orchestral / Chamber Music

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Capella Reial de Catalunya, the choir he founded in 1988, Jordo Savall has gathered four examples of their work, rich in Catalan heritage, luxuriously presented in a box and all published originally on the Astree label. In 1987, after 13 years of intense research, concerts and recordings with the ensemble Hespèrion XX, the decision to send our children to school in Catalonia led to us spending more time there and gave us the opportunity to contact and select various Romance language-speaking singers from Catalonia, Spain and other countries. Convinced of the defining influence that a country’s cultural roots and traditions inevitably have on the expression of its musical language, Montserrat Figueras and I founded La Capella Reial with the aim of creating one of the first vocal ensembles devoted exclusively to the performance of Golden Age music according to historical principles and consisting exclusively of Hispanic and Latin voices.

Jordi Savall & La Capella Reial - Monteverdi - Vespro Della Beata Vergine, 1610 (1989) {2CD Astrée-Auvidis E 8719}
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© 1989 Astrée / Auvidis | E 8719
Classical / Renaissance / Baroque / Choral

There are more than one dozen recordings of Monteverdi's great masterpiece, the Vespers of 1610, a distinction reserved for very few works and composers from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. With this kind of attention, you'd think that this substantial work for choir, soloists, and instruments would be more easily accessible–but it is in fact a structurally complex and musically intricate compilation of hymns, antiphons, and psalms, concluding with a magnificent setting of the Magnificat. Most recordings can't seem to overcome the strategic and technical problems of presenting such a three-dimensional work on a recording. But this one is different: the music literally comes alive and grabs our attention. If you're in the market for Monteverdi's Vespers, look no further. This is the most dynamic, dramatic version on disc.

Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI - Altre Follie, 1500-1750 (2005) {Alia Vox AVSA9844}
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© 2005 Alia Vox | AVSA 9844
Classical / Renaissance / Baroque / Chamber Music

Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as the new, centralized power of the absolute state was established in most European nations, royal courts all over Europe became the very heart of cultural and artistic life in their respective countries. They assembled an elite of aristocratic courtiers who were expected to master the principles of poetry, dance and vocal and instrumental music, as much as they were supposed to follow a strict and complex etiquette in all aspects of daily social interaction, adopt a luxurious and ever-changing fashion code, or sustain a refined conversation with a lady.