Jordi Savall – Hespèrion XXI – Jordi Savall : Armenian Spirit (Esprit d’Arménie) (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:16:52 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alia Vox

Esprit d’Armenie (Armenian Spirit) is a tribute to Armenia and to the Armenian musicians who have played alongside Jordi Savall and his wife Montserrat Figueras over the years. The repertoire consists alternately of very lively pieces and more contemplative ones, all of them beautifully played on traditional instruments, including the duduk, a flute with a deeply moving sound originating from a time before times. Jordi Savall unveils this music with his faultless musical flair and an endless curiosity.
(more…)

Jordi Savall – Venezia Millenaria (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 02:35:01 minutes | 2,61 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alia Vox

From 700 to1797, the Serenissima independence had a long life from its blurry beginnings up until the Treaty of Campoformio in 1797 which bound together the Republic of Venice to Italy. This millenium is musically illustrated by Jordi Savall on his latest work. He has surrounded himself by his own troops: the Hespèrion XXI, the Capella Reial de Catalunya, the Concert des Nations, as well as numerous “guest stars” from all over the Mediterranean. The history of Venice is known to alternate between times of economic, political and military prosperity, as it found itself under threat by hostile armies from the Ottoman Empire, France, Spain and the House of Austria. We hear an Orthodox vocal ensemble from Thessaloniki, the Jewish cantor Lior Elmaleh, Orient Musicians for all the Arabic, Moorish and Ottoman influences, and Haïg Sarikouyoundjian for Armenia in this extraordinary compilation. The works range from Byzantine songs to a fairly quirky adaptation of Beethoven signed by Luigi Bordese – a four-part male choir and organ with a text by Adolphe Joly. Not forgetting Mozart’sTurkish March which is deliciously rewritten by Savall, or even the classical Ottoman musicians Monteverdi and Vivaldi, as well as Rosenmüller (who worked for a long time in Venice, after having to flee Leipzig from a grim story involving young boys… less of a scandal in Venice it seemed…), Janequin illustrating Marignan, Dufay and his Fall of Constantinople, the Crusades and the songs that followed, in short, everything that you could imagine. A sumptuous document explaining the ins and outs of the whole matter.
(more…)

Jordi Savall – The Routes of Slavery (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:07:26 minutes | 2,39 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alia Vox

A homage to the memory of victims of the slave trade.
This new multicultural project from Jordi Savall and his musicians on The Routes of Slavery (1444-1888) marks a world first in the history of music and of the three continents involved in the trade in African slaves and their exploitation in the New World, which are brought together through the early music of the colonial period, the musical traditions of Mali and the oral traditions of the descendants of slaves in Madagascar, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. This ‘Musical Memoir’ is accompanied with historical texts on slavery, beginning with the early chronicles of 1444 and concluding with texts written by the Nobel Peace Prize-winner Martin Luther King shortly before his assassination in 1968.
(more…)

Jordi Savall – Passion – Officivm Hebdomadæ Sanctæ (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 03:21:26 minutes | 3,51 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alia Vox

Tom’as Luis de Victoria’s OFFICIUM HEBDOMADAE SANCTAE is one of the most compelling examples of creative genius in a composer, a toweringly poignant and masterpiece on the Passion of Christ, a pure but infinitely subtle creation, Ad majorem Dei gloriam.
(more…)

Jordi Savall – Musica Nova (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:17:43 minutes | 1,38 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alia Vox

This new recoding by Jordi Savall and his ensemble Hespèrion XXI enables us to discover the best pieces for consort of viols composed between 1500 and 1700.

London, Venice, Rome, Versailles, Madrid : all the great European courts have been illuminated by this musica nova, this new style, dreaming of an harmony beyond time and frontiers.

With this album, Jordi Savall sets a new standard by delivering the comprehensive vision of a repertoire he is already famous for.
(more…)

Jordi Savall – Marin Marais; Alcione (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 02:54:59 minutes | 3,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alia Vox

The last great trag’edie en musique or “musical tragedy” of the reign of Louis XIV, Alcyone (Alcione, as the title appears in the 1706 edition) is an all-round spectacle poised between the 17th and 18th centuries. From the 17th century it takes its mythological source, its prologue in praise of the king, its high literary quality and its vocation for spectacle, combining choreography and changes of scenery. In the depth of the emotions experienced by its protagonists, more sensitive than heroic, as well as in the expressiveness of the orchestra which envelopes them in a true sound d’ecor, it ushers in the 18th century.
(more…)

Jordi Savall – Joseph Haydn: Die Schöpfung (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:43:20 minutes | 1,70 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alia Vox

Jordi Savall leads La Capella Reial de Catalunya and Le Concert des Nations in Haydn’s The Creation. The composer confessed that while composing he had “felt an extraordinary religious fervor.” However, this work was also inspired by the spirituality of the Viennese Masonic lodges of his day. It is above all the first secular oratorio, in the sense that its message is addressed to all mankind, exactly like The Magic Flute, in operati.
(more…)

Jordi Savall – J. S. Bach : Les 4 Ouvertures BWV 1066-1069 (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:45:24 minutes | 1,78 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alia Vox

There’s very little to say about this recording save throwing yet more encomiums Jordi Savall’s way: as with his other Bach recordings, this is a success. The warmly dark, coppery sound for which these forces are renowned is here in its full glory; Savall’s pacing is neither frenzied nor laborious; the audio clarity is stunning. Because Savall is such a renowned gamba player who has recruited great fellow string players to his projects (note one Fabio Biondi on violin), you might overlook stellar playing elsewhere in the ensemble. But there’s no way to ignore the wind section in the opening movement in the first suite: the exquisite phrasing and pitch-perfect tones demand to be heard (and heard repeatedly, at that), and the masterful playing becomes even more delightfully apparent in the extended oboe and bassoon solo in the same suite’s Bourée.
(more…)

Jordi Savall – J. S. Bach: Weihnachts-Oratorium (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 02:23:51 minutes | 2,78 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alia Vox

Johann Sebastian Bach composed the six cantatas for the Christmas holidays of the year 1734 in order to have one for each holiday performed during the services in the main churches of Leipzig, St. Thomas and St. Nikolai. Both the progressive narrative based on the Gospels of Luke and Matthew and the musical framework give the cantatas the character of an autonomous cycle, which Jordi Savall and his ensembles are facing for the first time.
(more…)

Jordi Savall – In Excelsis Deo (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:54:11 minutes | 2,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alia Vox

This album, In excelcis Deo, with two religious works written at the time of the Spanish war of succession, presents the Missa Scala Arentina to four choirs by the Catalan composer Francesc Valls (1671-1747) and the Mass for Two Choirs and Two Orchestras by the French composer Henry Desmarest (1661-1741), each held up as a mirror to the other. These exceptional masterpieces are tightly connected in time, one dating from 1701 and the other from 1704. The Spanish war of succession raged from 1701 to 1714 and was the last of the major wars fought by Louis XIV of France: this terrible European conflict revolved around the succession to the Spanish throne following the death of the last Spanish Hapsburg, Charles II (he was epileptic, he contracted syphilis from his mother at birth- yes, that’s a thing – and he was also infertile) and, through it all, political and commercial dominance in Europe. Finally, Spain lost more or less all of its European possessions – in Italy, the Netherlands, Sardinia, and even in Spain itself, with Gibraltar falling into British hands. The Bourbons would be installed on the Spanish throne (where they still sit today), while Barcelona was “recaptured”, Catalonia having taken the side of Austria and the Austrian Hapsburgs… A can of worms was opened which is still squirming today! This album, musically very ecumenical thanks to the talent of Jordi Savall, juxtaposes the works of musicians who came from countries on opposite sides of the war, whose masses were held one in Barcelona, and the other in Versailles. It is up to the listener to form their own opinion as to whether the music of the very Catholic French and the very Catholic Catalans is so different after all!
(more…)

Jordi Savall – François Couperin: Les Apothéoses (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 47:09 minutes | 897 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alia Vox

Couperin is too easily seen as the tender, graceful and somewhat melancholy composer, whose soft-toned palette was the same as that which served the brush of Watteau. There was another Couperin who was a master of humour and whose claws were sharp. And yet another who was a musician involved in the aesthetic battles of this time and in the avant-garde. There were great battles, like the one to which the lovers of Italy rallied, and which led him to write, at the age of twenty-two or twenty-four, the first sonatas to appear in France. There were skirmishes, like that in which the sworn masters of the guild of minstrels opposed the royal musicians. In each case we find him participating zealously and actively – but also translating his own positions into music with his characteristic skill and lighthearted humour.
(more…)