Jordi Savall/Hesperion recordings

[elotito]

I have about 15 Jordi Savall/Hesperion albums but I'm looking to expand a bit. I love everything I've heard Savall touch but there's so many albums that he's been involved with.

Any particular ones I should look for?

[The new erato]

I particularly love the Carlos V and Lully discs.

[Octave]

I am several plays through his Handel WATER/FIREWORKS disc, and I think it is the snacks.   I would recommend that one disc to anyone.

Also I would shortlist:
1. J.S. Bach: ART OF FUGUE
2. Couperin PIECES DE VIOLES 1728
3. El Cant de la Sibil-La (I have two Alia Vox discs, Mallorca/Valencia and Catalunya....it looks like Naive just reissued a disc with a variation of this title but I haven't looked into what it's about...I think it might be an old Astree title: ASIN B00CMSP1GG).

[GuybrushThreepwood]

My personal favourites are:

1. La Folia 1490-1701.

2. Boccherini: Fandango, Sinfonie & La Musica Notturna di Madrid.

3. Don Quijote De La Mancha - Romances Y Músicas.

[Brian]

I am several plays through his Handel WATER/FIREWORKS disc, and I think it is the snacks.   I would recommend that one disc to anyone.

Of all the Christmas gifts I've given my mom over the years, the Savall Handel Water Music might be her favorite. And with good reason.

If you want to explore music of non-western European cultures, "Istanbul" is a masterpiece and I'm about to order "Balkan Spirit," "The Spirit of Syria," and the Turkish vocal album.

[TheGSMoeller]

My personal favourites are:

1. La Folia 1490-1701.

This, and his OTHER folia disc. Both amazing.

Of course I must include the Santa Rameau disc. (see avatar  )

[North Star]

I am several plays through his Handel WATER/FIREWORKS disc, and I think it is the snacks.   I would recommend that one disc to anyone.

Listened to this today, great stuff indeed!

[Todd]

If you don't already have it.

[Gurn Blanston]

My three favorites:

• The best ever Seven Last Words by Haydn, both the CD and DVD
• Boccherini Fandango
• Mozart Serenata notturna & Eine kleine Nachtmusik

Those will do to get on with, I think.

[Todd]

• Boccherini Fandango

Outstanding in every conceivable way.

[TheGSMoeller]

• The best ever Seven Last Words by Haydn, both the CD and DVD

Yes! I forgot about that one. (shame on me  )
And a DVD? I didn't know about that... now I do. Christmas gift to myself  [/list]

[Karl Henning]

Outstanding in every conceivable way.

Thanks for the reminder!

Yes! I forgot about that one. (shame on me  )
And a DVD? I didn't know about that... now I do. Christmas gift to myself  [/list]

Great idea!

[The new erato]

I forgot this, perhaps my favorite set of English Consort music, ever:

[asin]B000065VX6[/asin]

[Mandryka]

What do the Bach lovers think of his B minor mass?

[Karl Henning]

What do the Bach lovers think of his B minor mass?

What, you don't want to know what Gurn thinks of it?

(j/k)

[Mandryka]

I have about 15 Jordi Savall/Hesperion albums but I'm looking to expand a bit. I love everything I've heard Savall touch but there's so many albums that he's been involved with.

Any particular ones I should look for?

His music making is often too too lush and beautiful. There's something very conservative and middlebrow about some of Savall's style, the sort of thing that fits well on popular classic FM stations.

Sometimes I find what he does emotionally monochromatic (colour melancholy) and that's a killer -- the Purcell viol fantasias and Couperin Viol duos are an example.

My favourite Savall record is Alfons V El Magnànim: El Cancionero De Montecassino, with a stunning piece by Du Fay called Vene Sante Spiritus. I also liked Musical Offering and Brandenburg 6. There's also Marais -- Gout D'Etranger.

Sometimes I'm just not interested in the style. His CD of Songs from Catalunya reminds remind me of the 1970s when I used to go to folk music bars. I'm just not into that stuff any more. .

[Wakefield]

I totally disagree with Mandryka.

I think Savall is one of the essential names in Early Music during  the last 35 years. As a gamba player and researcher on his instrument, very, very few alive musicians are in the same league. Maybe Philippe Pierlot and Wieland Kuijken, but just maybe.

Never when I have listened to any of his gamba recordings (both solo & consort), the word "mellifluous" has come to mind. 

I don't enjoy to the same extent his "comercial" projects intended to sell some kind of cultural diversity: Hispania & Japan; Armenian Spirit, Balkan and so. But it's just me because in the middle there is a lot of great instrumental music to enjoy, without commercial, programmatic or political purposes.

These two recent reissues are EXCELLENT:

[asin]B00DNDR8W4[/asin]

[asin]B00FJAKW18[/asin]

[Mandryka]

One Savall CD I do find  myself going back to is Musical Offering. It's tinged with a sort of sadness which I don't hear so much in other performances, and I quite like that now and then.

Another one I like is Brandenburg 6. And I also remember enjoying a DVD of Monteverdi's Orfeo. And years ago I used to play his Eroica a lot.

But it's in earlier music that I value him the most, especially in the early recordings he made for EMI, I remember a nice one of the Libre Vermell, and excellent one of music for women troubadours, and a wonderful one of music for Spanish Kings (I especially enjoyed the CD of sacred music n that set.) There's also those magical Cds of sephardic music - Sybil La. (Am I wrong?  - it is Jewish music isn't it? )

The Dowland that Gordo mentioned, I remember discussing it here with someone before. I'm not convinced he finds all the emotional variety that Dowland demands in the preface to the Lachrimae: it's just like a bunch of sad sad bits of music, and that's not what the Lachrimae are about at all. Hving said that, it's hard to find a better commercially available performance - we'll have to wait for Les Voix Humaines to record it, or make do with the uncommercial recording by Schola Cantorum Basilensis.

The last time I explored a lot of Savall was when someone was asking me to recommend a recordimg of Marais' Sonnerie de Sainte Geneviève du Mont de Paris, Savall recorded it in the (excellent) Tous Les Matins du Monde CD. It's a gorgeous performance, typically polished and refined music making performed to a really high technical and poetic standard, very inspired. Harnoncourt recorded it too.

[kishnevi]

But it's in earlier music that I value him the most, especially in the early recordings he made for EMI, I remember a nice one of the Libre Vermell, and excellent one of music for women troubadours, and a wonderful one of music for Spanish Kings (I especially enjoyed the CD of sacred music n that set.) There's also those magical Cds of sephardic music - Sybil La. (Am I wrong?  - it is Jewish music isn't it? )


The last time I explored a lot of Savall was when someone was asking me to recommend a recordimg of Marais' Sonnerie de Sainte Geneviève du Mont de Paris, Savall recorded it in the (excellent) Tous Les Matins du Monde CD. It's a gorgeous performance, typically polished and refined music making performed to a really high technical and poetic standard, very inspired. Harnoncourt recorded it too.

Sybil-La is, I think, Catalan music.  The two CDs I have of his Sefardic music (actually a double CD combined by Alia Vox under the title Diaspora Sefardi) are Por que llorax blanca nina and Las estrellas de los cielos.  The first is vocal, the second all instrumental.   They are quite good,  but not really superior to other recordings of Sefardic music I have by La Roza Enflorese.   If Savall's recordings interest you,  check them out; they have a website with, I think, samples available.    I assume his folk/quasi folk music recordings would be of the same quality, although I don't have them.

I think your comment on the melancholy of Savall's music making is borne out by the selection of ballads he used on Por que llorax....--almost all of them have depressing texts,  which is not a true representation of Sefardic music.   La Roza Enflorese's CDs have a better mixture of moods.

I don't have a number of the CDs that have been mentioned, but  of what I do have,  I would suggest his Bach recordings in general,  his Marais recordings, and his recordings of medieval Spanish music.  Also his Boccherini and Vivaldi CDs are very good.

[Pat B]

Recognizing that we're veering into "name every recording" territory, and that I haven't heard most of the other suggestions, I have to mention the Biber Battalia and Requiem disc:

[asin]B00006RGMP[/asin]