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.

Jordi Savall & Montserrat Figueras - Tarquinio Merula - Su La Cetra Amorosa, Arie E Capricci (2008) {Alia Vox AVSA 9862 rec 1992}
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© 1992, 2008 Alia Vox | AVSA 9862
Classical / Baroque / Chamber Music / Vocal Music

This album, originally recorded in 1992, was remastered in 2008 and issued as part of the Heritage series of Jordi Savall's Alia Vox label in a nifty combination of reissue and improvement. The album certainly qualifies as one of the greatest hits of Savall (whose role here is as gambist, with a small ensemble of northern European players ) and his wife, soprano Montserrat Figueras, who is the star of the show. Figueras' vocals are as usual a central attraction, with their incredible combination of suppleness, accuracy over a wide range, expression, and Iberian gutsiness. But the program here, though somewhat removed from the Iberian core of the Figueras/Savall repertory, is equally compelling.

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 & Hesperion XXI - William Lawes - Consort Sets in Five & Six Parts (2002) {2CD Alia Vox AV9823 A+B}
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© 2002 Alia Vox | AV9823 A+B
Classical / Baroque / Chamber Music / Viola da Gamba

Lawes's "sets" are actually suites for five or six viols with an organ playing "underneath" them. Each shortish set is broken into even shorter parts: Fantazy, Aire, Paven, etc.–and while the formula remains essentially the same, the textures and harmonies are constantly changing, with dissonances and conversations between and among the various strings giving the works great variety. On these two beautiful CDs (the first devoted to Five parts, the second to Six), Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXI play on a pair of violins, four viols, and organ, offering great contrast and flavor and making us aware of just how energetic and fascinating counterpoint can be. The colors the six (or seven) musicians get from their instruments and the interplay among them is fantastic; the playing is superb. Fans of any type of chamber music will want to hear what this underrecorded composer who died too young (43) added to the genre. It's as if he created a new language, one that seems to have been waiting to be heard. A lovely, thoughtful couple of hours of music-making.

Jordi Savall & Le Concert Des Nations - Mozart - Serenate Notturne (2005) {Alia Vox AV9846}
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© 2005 Alia Vox | AVSA 9846
Classical / Viennese School / Orchestral

Loving performances caught in lovely sound, so what's not to love? Not, as it turns out, much, but not, regrettably, nothing at all. Jordi Savall, the gambist cum conductor who directs Le Concert Des Nations, is a genial, even affectionate leader who in these four light works of Mozart grants his players a considerable amount of interpretive freedom. Le Concert Des Nations, Savall's all-purpose classical and pre-classical chamber orchestra, responds with funny, even frothy, playing is as technically assured as it is brilliantly colorful. Alia Vox, Savall's label for everything he records from El Sabio to Monteverdi, catches the performances in a warm, natural, and deep acoustic of amazing vividness.

Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI - Venezia Millenaria 700-1797 (2018) {Alia Vox Official Digital Download AVSA9925}
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© 2018 Alia Vox | AVSA9925
Classical / Early Music / Medieval / Renaissance / Baroque / Chamber Music / Vocal Music

Over 1,000 years, from the Byzantine Empire to the Napoleonic Wars, Venice played a key role in shaping the Western music. Jordi Savall and his ensembles pay a tribute to a place that fully profited from its priviliged links with the Orient while hosting geniuses like Monteverdi, Gabrieli and Vivaldi. As you have come to expect from Alia Vox, this CD-book is lavishly illustrated and documented.

Jordi Savall & Hesperion XXI - Invocation a la Nuit - Musica Notturna (2008) [2CD] {10th Alia Vox Anniversary}
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© 2008 Alia Vox | AVSA 9861 A+B
Classical / Chamber Music / Vocal Music / Symphonies / Suites

Did you know that most Alia Vox albums were recorded between 1 and 4 am? Not only because of tight recording schedules, but also because the night creates an very special quality of silence… This double album is the best possible tribute to Alia Vox' short but intense history. Not just an 'anniversary CD': it is a fascinating musical journey, based not only on existing material, but also on unreleased recordings (Charpentier - CD2 track 5) and on future albums (CD2 track 1 was recorded for the upcoming project Jerusalem). Recordings from the Astrée catalogue are also included in this definitive overview of a major component of Jordi Savall's creative process: the night.

Between 1975 and 1983, Jordi Savall recorded five albums including the most beautiful pieces from each of the five ‘Books of Pieces for the Viol’ composed by Marin Marais between 1686 and 1725. A silence of nearly 250 years came to an end. A repertoire - and even better, an instrument - returned from oblivion. The memory of a composer had never been so closely linked to the performing art of amusician. 35 years after the beginning of this history-making enterprise, the five Astree albums are offered in a remastered sound, that fully rewards the genius of Marin Marais and Jordi Savall. Luxuriously documented – as always with Alia Vox - this anthology is a must-have for any Baroque music lover.

This is an excellent and varied selection of composers from the very well known like Palestrina, Monteverdi, Bach and Vivaldi, through the less famous but familiar like Frescobaldi, Sainte-Colombe and Zelenka, to the downright obscure. It is all delightful: the musicians are uniformly excellent, and include such great names as Gustav Leonhardt, Cantus Colln, Christopher Hogwood and so on. They give fine performances both of the familiar works and of the less familiar ones. Obviously there will be discs you like more than others and you may already have favourite versions of some works, but these discs are never less than very good and are often outstanding.

The recordings are typical DHM with superb clarity and dynamic range. The mastering to digital is excellent, and the booklet accompanying the series, while brief, is informative. The only unifying these here is baroque Italian composers, but it's extremely easy to fill a collection ten times this size with material from that category. What we end up with in these ten discs is a lovely mix of known and unknown, each pleasant to listen to and discover, and there's no listener fatigue at all working through these discs.