Intermezzo

Jordi Savall at Wigmore Hall

Jordi Savall - Wigmore Hall, 8 May 2009

Abel Prelude   Bach Allemande   Schenk Aria Burlesca   Sainte-Colombe Le Fils Fantaisie en Rondeau; Prélude in E minor for viola da gamba   Sainte-Colombe Les Pleurs   Bach Bourreé II   Demachy Prelude en Re M    Marais Les Voix Humaines, 2 Musettes   Hume A Souldiers March, Captaine Humes Galliard, Hark! Hark! from ‘Musicall Humors’ & A Souldiers Resolution from ‘Musicall Humors’   Ferrabosco Coranto   Ford Why Not Here   Playford La Cloche   Anon The Bag-Pipes Tuning    Encores - Marais Musette in G, Trad/Savall variations on a Breton song

The title of Jordi Savall's Wigmore Hall recital was Les Voix Humaines - not just the name of a work by viola da gamba godfather Marin Marais, but also a perfect description for the peculiarly human quality of the incredible range of sounds Savall can produce from his instrument. Sighs, moans, weeping, whispering, even laughter were magicked out of his 7 strings with a staggering range of bowed and plucked techniques. It's no coincidence that the few parts Bach wrote specifically for the viol are those where deep expressiveness is required. I was particularly fascinated by its harmonic capabilities - big chords and long sustained notes.

Most viol music isn't notated in much detail, so Savall has licence to work out what composers might have expected and what sounds best. An all-too-short pre-concert interview unfortunately touched on very little about playing specifics, despite Savall's evident keenness to demonstrate technique, as the interviewer (the Telegraph's Michael White) was more interested in arguing about why the instrument died out. An opportunity missed.

The programme was split into two harmonious halves - mostly French for the first, all-English for the  second, contrasting soul-searching introspection and virtuoso playfulness. Saint-Colombe's mournful Pleurs really did drop like tears.  A Bach Bourreé for cello sounded gravely apocalyptic beneath Savall's fingers. The strange, slow harmonies of Marais searched for hidden truths.

The mood lightened with Captain Tobias Hume's ingenious evocations of trumpet, drum and march. Savall seems to play these at every British recital, and I never tire of their inventiveness and humour. He deftly switched to lyra tuning, enabling some complex open-string work, for Ferrabosco's Coranto. Another tuning adjustment for Playford's La Cloche allowed a rapid left-hand pizzicato response to chime-like bowed phrases. It wasn't too hard to imagine those 17th century gentleman viol whizzes wowing the ladies of an evening with their astounding skills.

He finished with the earliest work on the programme, 16th century arrangements of bagpipe tunes. Here he crossed a couple of central strings for an open octave drone effect.

Only two encores were forthcoming - Savall clearly follows the old maxim of leaving 'em wanting more.

Jordi Savall makes his Proms debut

Proms Chamber Music 5: Jordi Savall - Cadogan Hall, 18 August 2008

Robert de Niro and Neil Tennant Jordi Savall and Rolf Lislevand

Ortiz Passamezzo antico; Folia; Ruggiero Romanesca; Passamezzo moderno
Hume A Souldiers March; Harke, harke; A Souldiers Resolution
Marais Pièces de viole, 3è livre - Prélude; Muzettes I/II; La sautillante
Sanz Jácaras; Canarios
Marais Couplets des Folies d'espagne

What a privilege to spend an hour in the company of the great master of the viola da gamba, Jordi Savall, and how astonishing to discover that after a near-fifty year career he is only now making his Proms debut. 

His technical facility is so ingrained that his instrument seems almost like another limb. But more than that, he has the rare gift of reinventing the music each time he plays it. And that's harder than it seems. The harmonic conventions of his chosen 16-18th century repertoire generate a largely predictable melodic line. But what Savall does is to vary timbre and colour and articulation to such an extent that you truly don't know what's coming next.

So many early music perfomances I've suffered are simply a production line of notes, on a lucky day perked up by a bit of generic sprightliness. Savall on the other hand has technique, scholarship and musicality, his conception encompasses everything from the big picture to the tiniest brushstrokes, and he brings the music completely alive.

With the sympathetic collaboration of Rolf Lislevand on theorbo and guitar (a tiny, twangy relative of the ukulele), he showcased the many guises of the viola da gamba - the near-percussive effects of short, choppy bowing and spiccato in the earlier Spanish work, the longer-bowed, legato styles of the later Marin Marais selections, the novel drum and call effects in Hume's military-inspired pieces.

That we can listen to the Ortiz and Hume works at all is also down to Savall's efforts - he rescued them from dusty library shelves for what was probably their first airing in hundreds of years.

What a tragedy his busy calendar doesn't bring him to London more often.

It's Jordi Savall day in Edinburgh

Monteverdi's L'Orfeo - Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 13 August 2007
and
Jordi Savall - Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, 13 August 2007
Edinburgh International Festival

One of the reasons I suspect Monteverdi's L'Orfeo has lasted 400 years is its resilience to interpretation. It's musically strong, dramatically simple, and many approaches can work. What Jordi Savall and Gilbert Deflo did with this one was to make it as close to the original 17th century experience as possible. (Fugly Edwardian theatre, surtitles, billion watt spotlights, etc aside of course.)

The small orchestra, Le Concert des Nations, was packed with period instruments. The musicians, in a shallow pit, were dressed in period costume right down to their shoes. Most impressive of all was conductor Jordi Savall himself, tall, grave and bearded. When the orchestra's on display, why not make it part of the show?

The staging itself, intentionally old-fashioned, framed the action in simple flat board sets and a minimum of gesture and movement. The costumes were simple and beautiful, fortuny-pleated gowns in Botticelli shades all round, the carefully selected colours denoting each character.

It was closer to Robert Wilson's spare mannered style more than a typical 'period' production. Especially as it wasn't in slavish thrall to the past - a couple of effective anachronisms were the lavish dry ice that formed the fires of Hades and the silvery mirrored balloon-skin panels that served as opening and closing curtain. You can't really see it in this pic, but the panels rippled and trembled like a pool of water, v.21st C:

The musical side of the performance was more of a mixed bag. Furio Zanasi was a commanding and dignified Orfeo who could have slotted into any production of this opera. Others had problems of intonation, projection and tone here and there. And the period instruments used, by their very nature, render a variety of timbres rather than an immaculate monolithic sound. But although enthusiasm was more to the fore than clipped precision, it was by no means a disaster, and in some ways seemed an appropriate effect for this rather intimate production.

Earlier in the day I saw more Jordi Savall, this time his solo viola da gamba recital at the Queen's Hall.

When Jordi Savall wanted to learn the viola da gamba in the 1960's, it was so obscure he initially had to teach himself. The fact that it's no longer a novelty is largely down to his efforts. In this programme, as much as showcase for the instrument itself as for the performer, he showed just how many different ways the viola da gamba can be played.

A Bach cello Bourée re-arranged for pizzicato viola da gamba by Savall himself displayed the instrument's resonant, guitar-like tone. In Tobias Hume's Musicall Humours he reproduced a drum sound with left hand pizzicato. Needless to say the virtuosity required to pull all this off was staggering.

A range of tunings was used, and the re-tuning between pieces was completed with amazing speed and precision, Savall sometimes needing only a single turn of the peg to get it spot-on (OK, not part of the performance, but anyone who's ever played a string instrument will recognise the achievement here).

The recital ended with a suite of pieces in 'bagpipe' tuning, where the middle two strings are tuned an octave apart and act like bagpipe drones. Savall explained that these pieces had come down to us only in tablature, so it wasn't really clear how they'd been played originally. He'd reconstructed them after studying traditional music from places like Ireland and Norway. Again, a stunning display of virtuosity, and yet another completely different range of sounds pulled from this one seemingly simple instrument.

Afterwards I felt like rushing out to buy a viola da gamba, but instead I ducked out of the rain into Fabhatrix in Grassmarket, birthplace of some loud but functional crafty-style felt hats, perfect for the unpredictable Edinburgh weather, and what's more, made of eco-friendly recycled fabrics.

Orfeo and more in Edinburgh

Tomorrow I'm off to Edinburgh, where this year's international festival is loosely themed around Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, celebrating its 400th birthday. I'll be hitting the Jordi Savall-produced opera itself and some of Concerto Italiano's Monteverdi Madrigals. Not to mention Jordi Savall's solo viola da gamba recital (if I can get up in time). Savall sidesteps slavish reproduction in favour of spontaneity, so I'm looking forward to these.

Tuesday's soirée française offers a rare tenor rendition of Berlioz's Les nuits d’été from Toby Spence, plus a chance to re-evaluate the Three Studies after Couperin by Thomas Adès premiered earlier this year in London.

Sadly I'm not staying around for long enough to catch the Tiger Lillies Monteverdi tribute concert on 25 August. No news yet on exactly what they're going to do, but armed with their habitual countertenor, musical saw and toy drumkit I'm guessing they won't be drafting in Nikolaus Harnoncourt to conduct.