Outil de traduction (Très approximatif)
Translator tool (Very approximate)
Reviewer:
David Fallows
Hildegard of
Bingen is now firmly enough established that she has almost achieved the
Bach-like status according to which it is generally believed that her genius
remains however you perform the music: she is an entirely distinctive figure,
musically bold and with an astonishing ability to modulate and vary her melodic
patterns. And Arianna Savall is also firmly enough established as a singer that
you can expect whatever she does to be convincing. But some listeners may find
that her latest issue tests the boundaries. She sings five of Hildegard’s works
very slowly, accompanied by a range of instruments – from Norway a hardanger
fiddle and a nyckelharpa, a santur from Persia, a Tibetan singing bowl, what
sounds like a tromba marina played as an open-string drone, and various
reconstructions of medieval instruments. In between there are four compositions
(Meditations) in a related style by Petter Udland Johansen. And the longest
track is the 16 minutes of Johansen singing Abelard’s Planctus David with
Savall’s harp accompaniment.
This creates a kind of New Age
atmosphere, soothing, devotional and absolutely sincere. Oddly, the texts and
the musical form come through most strongly in the online ‘free’ bonus track,
for which you need to subscribe to the label’s newsletter; otherwise they tend
to get buried in the surrounding colour. But the sounds are all so gorgeous that
it no longer seems to matter. The instrumental playing is flawless.
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