Texte paru dans: / Appeared in: |
|
|
The prospect of telephoning Jordi Savall to talk about Alia Vox, his own recently launched record label, was both exciting and a little daunting. Exciting for obvious reasons. This is, after all, the man who has for nearly 30 years held the near-undisputed crown as the finest living viol player. But there is of course much more to Savall than that. A burning and continuously pioneering spirit has led the Catalonian to found a variety of ensembles through which he has been able to channel his seemingly inexhaustible energies. The first, Hesperion XX, was founded in 1974 in conjunction with the soprano Montserrat Figueras, lutenist Hopkinson Smith, and wind player and percussionist Lorenzo Albert. Then in 1987 Savall founded La Capella Reial de Catalunya, a group dedicated to exploring larger-scale vocal works concentrated largely on Baroque music of the Iberian Peninsula. Two years later the increasing inclination among early musicians to move forward into the Classical era led Savall to found Le Concert des Nations, a period-instrument orchestra devoted to *ie Baroque and Classical repertoire, which despite its pan-global name draws most of its performers from young players in southern Europe. Daunting? Well, yes, that too, because Savall has a reputation for being something of a maverick who holds some pretty trenchant views. Neither does he appear to be very fond of critics; I'd recently read another interview where he had some harsh things to say about critics who are not open to a wide variety of interpretive possibilities. This is obviously a particularly sensitive area for Savall, who has never hesitated to stamp his own personality on the music he performs, not infrequently attracting criticism from those who have found his propensity to overgild the lily controversial and at times downright perverse. It had occurred to me to wonder whether this might be one of the reasons why Savall had decided to launch his own label. But why wonder when I could ask the man himself? "My principal motivation was freedom, something essential to an artist. Also, there was the fact that we have seen a revolution among record companies, who have tended to merge into bigger and bigger companies. Every year they change their artistic director and so on, and in those circumstances it is very difficult to have a clear view of the future. Auvidis [with whom Savall had recorded for some years] is now part of a multimedia company. So the artistic policy had changed, and I was already thinking that, after 30 years of record-making experience with a large range of companies, I was finally prepared to create my own label and do my own production." Savall is in fact on record as having said that he believes there are too many discs made for purely commercial reasons, discs with no real sense of artistic purpose. It's a sentiment with which many would agree, and I asked him whether he was referring to the general Classical market or early music discs in particular. "I think it's general, because a record company is basically a commercial institution. They do something and have to make a profit from it, otherwise it's not possible to exist. The problem is to find a good balance between artistic and commercial necessities. We're not a commercial company, in the sense that we are musicians doing the production. Obviously we have to sell as many discs as possible, but the first objective is to present from the repertoire we cover the most beautiful music, and give to our audience the opportunity of discovering music and composers who are perhaps not the most interesting from the commercial point of view. In our first year of production we have issued discs of music by Marin [AV 9802] and Cabanilles [AV 9801], Elizabethan consort music [AV 9804], the Folia disc [AV 9805], and the Song of the Sibil [AV 9806]. There is no Vivaldi, or anything like that." Indeed, the six discs so far released on Alia Vox represent the kind of typically eclectic selection one might have expected from Savall. The most personal of those issues has been described as virtually representing a Jordi Savall calling card. Les Voix humaines [AV 9803] is a guide to the viol spanning the Baroque, designed specifically to illustrate the 17th-century dispute as to whether the viol was primarily a melody or harmony instrument. The title (the name of a piece by Marais)obviously draws attention to the expressive qualities of the instrument, equating it with the human voice, yet the composer whose work runs like a thread through the program is Bach, the least vocal of Baroque composers. I asked Savall whether he would explain the apparent contradiction. "The idea that Bach is not a vocal composer is a general opinion, but I think that much of his music is vocally conceived, and one finds many examples in the cantatas and the passions. If you listen to a piece like the Sarabande [from the Solo Violin Partita in B Minor, BWV 1002] on the Voix Humaines disc—that is pure singing." "But," I suggest, "so much of Bach's vocal music is instrumentally conceived. . . ." "That is because at this time there is not a strong distinction between vocal and instrumental music—an instrument can play like a voice and a voice can sing like an instrument. If you take something like the viol part in "Es ist vollbracht" from the St. John Passion, that is purely vocal music. But the idea behind Les Voix humaines is not necessarily to replicate the human voice, but to illustrate the viol's capabilities in music of strong melodic, cantabile beauty." There's a strong impression that one of the things that Savall is trying to do with Alia Vox is to flesh out areas that he has touched on previously but not been able to explore thoroughly. Both the Cabanilles and Marin discs appear to be examples. I asked him how true this is. "Yes, we have now been working for 35 years on the perception of varied repertories, and what we want to do now is to go back and illustrate different aspects of music we think has special qualities. Our first year's output is a very clear example of this." The Marin is a delightful disc: evocative, popular dance songs that seem to come straight from the soil of Spain. Savall agreed, and was eager to point out how complementary it is to another of Alia Vox's initial releases. "Yes, and the Song of the Sibil disc gives us precisely the opposite. Marin's songs are written in a very elegant, popular idiom of the 17th century, while the Song of the Sibil explores a very old and traditional mixture of the liturgical and popular in a mystical way. I think it is very good for people to be able to hear these two extremes of our Spanish repertoire." The Song of the Sibil is a disc of quite rapturous beauty, a reconstruction of two long verse-and-refrain settings of a genre performed in a number of locations in Spain at Christmas over many centuries. I told Savall that were I to be given just one Alia Vox disc to take to that mythical desert island, this would be it. "I completely agree with you! I think we obtained a very special atmosphere by recording in a beautiful place like Cardona [the chapel attached a country house] late in the day— anytime up to three o'clock in the morning. Every time we make this kind of record it is an experience for us, particularly in this instance for Montserrat [Figueras], who sang these extraordinary texts related to the Apocalypse, with their message of justice. At the time these pieces were written the people who had power had everything, but these texts say that at the day of the last judgment everybody will be equal." I pointed out that to me those words of the refrain—"On judgment day who served shall be repaid"—held a certain terrifying ambiguity. If you've served well, fine, but if you've served in a less admirable way the repayment will be something very different. "Yes, of course, but that is the sense of justice—we will not think of what you are, whether you are rich or have power, but what you have done. One of the reasons the tradition lasted for a thousand years is that it reflected the voice of the people. It was not the church, which had tried to forbid the Sibilic tradition many times." The Cabanilles features transcriptions of organ works by the major Spanish composer for the instrument in the second half of the 17th century. To my mind it works extraordinarily well, but the colorful results are exactly the sort ofthing for which Savall has been criticized by the purists he so distrusts. We do know however that music of this period was frequently transcribed. I asked him whether there was direct contemporary evidence of transcription in this specific instance. "Well, if you look at the books of the period the music is in tablature—the music is for vihuela, for harp, or for organ and it is open to various possibilities. In the edition of Cabezon's organ works made by his son there are diminutions that work very well for vihuelists, and they used them. The other thing is that in the 16th century, when the arrival of gold from the New World made the church very wealthy, it was possible for every church to pay for a group of wind instruments, harp, organ, etc. Then, later, at the beginning of the 17th century, this money was no longer there, and for this reason they started obviously draws attention to the expressive qualities of the instrument, equating it with the human voice, yet the composer whose work runs like a thread through the program is Bach, the least vocal of Baroque composers. I asked Savall whether he would explain the apparent contradiction. "The idea that Bach is not a vocal composer is a general opinion, but I think that much of his music is vocally conceived, and one finds many examples in the cantatas and the passions. If you listen to a piece like the Sarabande [from the Solo Violin Partita in B Minor, BWV 1002] on the Voix Humaines disc—that is pure singing." "But," I suggest, "so much of Bach's vocal music is instrumentally conceived. . . ." "That is because at this time there is not a strong distinction between vocal and instrumental music—an instrument can play like a voice and a voice can sing like an instrument. If you take something like the viol part in "Es ist vollbracht" from the St. John Passion, that is purely vocal music. But the idea behind Les Voix humaines is not necessarily to replicate the human voice, but to illustrate the viol's capabilities in music of strong melodic, cantabile beauty." There's a strong impression that one of the things that Savall is trying to do with Alia Vox is to flesh out areas that he has touched on previously but not been able to explore thoroughly. Both the Cabanilles and Marin discs appear to be examples. I asked him how true this is. "Yes, we have now been working for 35 years on the perception of varied repertories, and what we want to do now is to go back and illustrate different aspects of music we think has special qualities. Our first year's output is a very clear example of this." The Marin is a delightful disc: evocative, popular dance songs that seem to come straight from the soil of Spain. Savall agreed, and was eager to point out how complementary it is to another of Alia Vox's initial releases. "Yes, and the Song of the Sibil disc gives us precisely the opposite. Marin's songs are written in a very elegant, popular idiom of the 17th century, while the Song of the Sibil explores a very old and traditional mixture of the liturgical and popular in a mystical way. I think it is very good for people to be able to hear these two extremes of our Spanish repertoire." The Song of the Sibil is a disc of quite rapturous beauty, a reconstruction of two long verse-and-refrain settings of a genre performed in a number of locations in Spain at Christmas over many centuries. I told Savall that were I to be given just one Alia Vox disc to take to that mythical desert island, this would be it. "I completely agree with you! I think we obtained a very special atmosphere by recording in a beautiful place like Cardona [the chapel attached a country house] late in the day— anytime up to three o'clock in the morning. Every time we make this kind of record it is an experience for us, particularly in this instance for Montserrat [Figueras], who sang these extraordinary texts related to the Apocalypse, with their message of justice. At the time these pieces were written the people who had power had everything, but these texts say that at the day of the last judgment everybody will be equal." I pointed out that to me those words of the refrain—"On judgment day who served shall be repaid"—held a certain terrifying ambiguity. If you've served well, fine, but if you've served in a less admirable way the repayment will be something very different. "Yes, of course, but that is the sense of justice—we will not think of what you are, whether you are rich or have power, but what you have done. One of the reasons the tradition lasted for a thousand years is that it reflected the voice of the people. It was not the church, which had tried to forbid the Sibilic tradition many times." The Cabanilles features transcriptions of organ works by the major Spanish composer for the instrument in the second half of the 17th century. To my mind it works extraordinarily well, but the colorful results are exactly the sort of thing for which Savall has been criticized by the purists he so distrusts. We do know however that music of this period was frequently transcribed. I asked him whether there was direct contemporary evidence of transcription in this specific instance. "Well, if you look at the books of the period the music is in tablature—the music is for vihuela, for harp, or for organ and it is open to various possibilities. In the edition of Cabezon's organ works made by his son there are diminutions that work very well for vihuelists, and they used them. The other thing is that in the 16th century, when the arrival of gold from the New World made the church very wealthy, it was possible for every church to pay for a group of wind instruments, harp, organ, etc. Then, later, at the beginning of the 17th century, this money was no longer there, and for this reason they started our conversation while it was turned over. When we came back "on line" he had obviously had further thoughts on his new project: "One more thing I haven't mentioned about the reason for creating Alia Vox is that it gives me the opportunity to control a recording in all its different aspects: repertoire, interpretation, sound. We always record with only two microphones, and are now recording in 24-bit sound. We also spend a lot of time trying to find the right sound and atmosphere for each individual record—a location that is appropriate for the style and the period of the music. Finally, and just as importantly, we try to produce a finished object that will reflect the quality of the music and sound. To me it is important that even at the planning stage of a recording we are already thinking about which painting we will use, so that we can give our audience a visual idea of what the music will be like. In the era of the Internet and virtual reality I think it very important that we produce an object that has an aesthetic value, so that the owner can feel that he already has pleasure by the time he holds it in his hands." In regard to both sound and presentation, there is no question that the early Alia Vox releases certainly live up to the high ideals Savall has set himself. It would, indeed, be difficult to name a disc with a more evocative atmosphere than The Song of the Sibil, while the more intimate recordings have an unobtrusive immediacy and clarity that marks them out as the ideal type of recording, the kind where the listener is not even aware of the presence of engineers. Packaging, employing the new-style gatefold sleeves, is also of a very high quality, with notes and the text translations for the Sibil and Marin discs given in four languages, although the size of print in the Cabanilles booklet will test even the most eagle-eyed reader to the limit. Up to this point there had been little if any sign of the reputedly acerbic side of Jordi Savall. So, ever willing to introduce a little contention into the proceedings, I introduced the topic of a recent interview in which he had had some outspoken things to say about critics. I asked him if he personally feels particularly sensitive to criticism. "Well, a musician is essentially a sensitive person. What really upsets me, makes me angry are critics who do not have a minimum of objectivity. I know that many critics in this country and in France are young people who have been covering all kinds of music for just two or three years, and they have no idea how things work, how they go. They write pap, but as if they have found the truth. And if you can't be completely sure after a lifetime in early music, how can they know? There is not one truth, there are many ways to reach an authentic style. Music has to live, and you cannot make music live without taking personal risks. You have to remember that nearly all these musicians, from Bach to Marais, from Cabezón to Sainte-Colombe, from troubadours to Machaut were great improvisers. It is necessary for a person to spend their whole life with one type of music, bringing to it an extraordinary sense of freedom. We cannot preach this music if we are not conscious of this." Words that all of us who write about early music might reflect upon. I had one final question to put to Savall. He had already mentioned that there was a Holborne disc awaiting release, but I wondered what other plans he has for Alia Vox in the more immediate future. "The next project is a disc of music by Lully, three beautiful suites from the music for Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme which present a picture of the music written for the Louis XIV's orchestra, the first important French orchestral music. There will also be music from the Cancionero of Montecassino, which dates from the period of Alfonso the Magnanimous in Naples. Then there will be a disc of Spanish Sephardic songs, which are preserved in many Mediterranean countries. And finally later this year we will have a disc of music by Francisco Guerrero. Then next year our projects include a celebration of 25 years of Hesperion XX featuring music associated with Cervantes, a disc of secular and sacred music by Joan Cererols, and one of William Byrd's consort pieces." "And," I added, "one day I hope we shall hear you playing the music of William Lawes!" Jordi Savall's final reaction left no doubt that it was a hope likely to be fulfilled. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|