From the Album - Altre Follie - Folias Criollas - Peru
www.aaronconcert.com/savall.html
Hespèrion XXI - Jordi Savall, Richard Cheetham; Rolf Lislevand, Arianna Savall, Carlos García-Bernalt, Xavier Puertas, David Mayoral, Marc Clos.
From Wikipedia
For listeners unconverted by the art of Jordi Savall, the enthusiasm with which his fervent fans have greeted his successive recordings has always seemed, to say the least, uncritical. After all, it seemed highly implausible that Savall's records could have steadily gotten better through his long career. How could his late-'70s recordings of Marin Marais' bass viole music have been bettered by his 1988 recording of Monteverdi's Vespers, then bettered again by his 1992 recording of Mozart's Requiem, then bettered again by his 1998 recording La Voix Humaines? And, the unconverted asked, how could Savall have again made a better record in this 2005 recording called Altre Follie with his chamber ensemble Hespèrion XXI featuring violinist Manfredo Kraemer?
All Savall's fervent fans could do was to point to the recording. The excellence of the music on the program is undeniable. Each Follie setting from the anonymous Peruvian composer's rhythmically infectious Folias criollas to the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi's violently virtuosic La Follia Sonata is more impressive than the last, their totality forming an organic unity in which the whole is far more than the sum of its parts. The beauty of the performances is incontestable. From the elegantly accomplished playing of Manfredo Kraemer through the supple théorbe playing of Rolf Lislevand and the blissful harp playing of Arianna Savall to the masterful viola da gamba playing of Jordi Savall himself, Hespèrion XXI is a group with an affectionate ensemble, an effortless virtuosity, and a warm and embracing humanity. For Savall's fervent fans, the easy intensity of their playing and the profound expressivity of their interpretations coupled with the superbly chosen programs are the qualities that have consistently if improbably enabled Savall to make better records. Alia Vox's sound captures the uncanny sense of real people performing in a real space in real time.
Review by James Leonard
Jordi Savall
Jordi Savall is an exceptional figure in todays music world. For more than thirty years he has been devoted to the rediscovery and performance of neglected musical treasures as a soloist and director of his three ensembles. He has restored an essential repertoire to all those with ears to hear it. Except for the happy few who already revere it, the viola da gamba, is an instrument so refined that it takes us to the very brink of silence. Through three ensembles Hesprion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya and Le Concert des Nations, all founded together with Montserrat Figueras Jordi Savall has explored and fashioned a universe of emotions and beauty, presenting it to audiences everywhere and to millions of music lovers, and thus bringing recognition to the viola da gamba and to music from here and elsewhere that had fallen into oblivion, all of which has earned him a place as one of the foremost champions of early music.
One of the most multifariously gifted musicians of his generation, his career as a concert performer, teacher, researcher and creator of new projects, both musical and cultural, make him one of the principal architects of the current revaluation of historical music. With his key contribution to Alain Corneaus film Tous les Matins du Monde (winner of a Csar best-soundtrack award), his busy concert life (over 140 concerts a year) and recording schedule (6 recordings a year), and with the creation of his own record label Alia Vox, he is demonstrating that early music does not have to be elitist: it can arouse interest in everyone, its audience being ever younger and ever stronger in numbers
He has recorded over 170 Cds. He has won many awards, most recently his double CD Don Quijote de la Mancha, Romances y Msicas won him a prize in the early music category, and it was also selected as 2006 Record of the Year by Gramophone Magazine. That CD was among the five nominees for the 2006 Grammy Awards 2006 in Los Angeles (USA).
Jordi Savall has been appointed Intercultural Ambassador as part of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008 which has as its slogan Together in diversity as well as an Artist for the Peace in the good will Ambassadors program of the UNESCO.
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