Discover the music of Heinrich Isaac with these authentic performances from La Capella Reial de Catalunya and Hespèrion XXI under the inspired direction of early music specialist Jordi Savall. This program paints a portrait of an era during which the Hundred Year's War ended, the Medici family reached its peak, the idea of the Reformation surged and Charles V was crowned at the head of an Empire that redefined the idea of Europe.
Ibn Battuta, dubbed the traveler of Islam, was a Moroccan scholar who at the age of 21 began a series of travels that eventually covered all of the Muslim world and several lands beyond. He traversed the Middle East, making the pilgrimage to Mecca and seeing the other great capitals of the region; traveled to what was then El Andalus in Spain and along the Mediterranean coast; recorded the glories of the Byzantine empire in its later stages; traveled to India, where he was appointed the Sultan's ambassador to China and described that culture as well…
The subject of Jordi Savall's latest historical exploration is the life of the 16th-century missionary Francisco Javier, better known outside the Spanish-speaking world as St Francis Xavier. He was one of the founders of the Jesuits, and travelled widely through the east, eventually reaching Japan and the islands of China, where he died. Savall's compilation uses the historical staging posts of Javier's life and times, from his birth in Navarre to the start of his missionary travels as the scaffolding for a typically imaginative and exotic sequence of musics, which begins in the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella and ends with the traditions of Japan and China. Like its predecessors, which were centred upon Christopher Columbus and Don Quixote, the musical performances by Savall's ensemble Hesperion XXI and his usual lineup of soloists, complemented here by Japanese performers, is packaged lavishly within the covers of a glossily illustrated 264-page book with texts in five languages. The multilingual presentation doesn't make it easy to find one's way around, but the discs themselves are vividly performed, and their variety is beguiling.