Montserrat Figueras

This album gathers highlights from Montserrat Figueras’ career for the Astrée, DHM, EMI and Alia Vox labels. 5 of the 35 tracks have already been reissued in a portrait album released in the 1990s by Astrée, La 'Voix de l’ Emotion'. Jordi Savall wanted to keep the same title for this much more comprehensive double album, in tribute to the late Montserrat Figueras, his wife and collaborator of 43 years.

35 year-career: 35 tracks

The Sublime Porte was the name of the open court of the sultan, led by the Grand Vizier. It got its name from the gate to the headquarters of the Grand Vizier in the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, where the sultan held greeting ceremonies for foreign ambassadors. It was an ancient Ottoman practice to make the gates of cities and kings' palaces places of assembly. Later the name came to refer to the Empire's position as gateway between Europe and Asia.

Following the success of the album 'Istanbul', Jordi Savall crosses new boundaries between Orient and Occident: this time, the vocal traditions of the Ottoman Empire, Armenia and the Jewish Diaspora are masterly resuscitated. Instrumental interludes enable us to enjoy this journey through time and space. In addition to Hespèrion XXI, this album features the elite of Turkish traditional musicians under the inspired direction of Jordi Savall.

This set gathers 2 albums released in 1990 and 1994.

Each of them definitely established Montserrat Figueras as one of the best performers of Claudio Monteverdi’s vocal music. At this time, she developed an innovative style of interpretation, characterised by great fidelity to historical sources, combined with an extraordinary creative and expressive power, that has exerted a decisive influence on the whole historical music movement.

Vocal music before 1800 required a new technical and stylistic approach capable of restoring to the beauty and emotion of the voice, that most human of all forms of expression, the necessary balance between singing and declamation, with an emphasis on the poetic and spiritual dimension of the text.

She is accompanied by Jordi Savall on CD1 and Ton Koopman on CD2.

This reissue in the Heritage series from 1988 enables us to hear Montserrat Figueras singing the repertoire she embodies like nobody else: traditional Catalan songs. This performance is the natural continuation of her exploration of the great works connected to Catalonia, e.g. the Song of the Sybil or the Red Book of Montserrat (Gregorian manuscript). On this shore of Mediterranean Sea, traditional and ‘classical’ repertoires are connected in a very intimate way. This album is a landmark of in the career of Montserrat Figueras: her innovative style of interpretation, characterised by great fidelity to the historical sources, combined with an extraordinary creative and expressive power, sounds at its best.

Thanks to this historic recording, one of Astrée’s biggest successes, Montserrat Figueras established her reputation as the high priestess of this repertoire. A must-have for any lover of ancient music…

Jordi Savall’s recordings of Mozart are few and this album reminds us of what we are missing. Recorded in 1991, it bears the signature of Jordi Savall’s talent as a conductor: breadth, clarity, beauty of singing. Mentioned on Building a Library as one for reissue - please!

Booklet : French, Spanish, English, German, Italian, Catalan

When the baroque extravagance crosses oceans...

After meeting the musical traditions of the New World, the European Baroque repertoire enriched itself with new colours and rhythms, which make it irresistible. Jordi Savall invites us to an unprecedented instrumental and vocal journey from Spain to Peru to Mexico, playing for the first time with virtuoso Mexican musicians… Get ready !

La Barcha d'Amore is an eclectic, contrasting selection of some of the most beautiful vocal and instrumental music inspired by mythology and 17th-century European love poetry. Music of time and memory, performed by Montserrat Figueras and Jordi Savall, together with Ton Koopman, Hopkinson Smith,Andrew Lawrence-King and other members of the ensemble Hespèrion XX (which in 2001 became Hespèrion XXI) and the orchestra Le Concert Des Nations, have selected recordings that they made from 1976 to 1996 for the labels Emi Electrola, Dhm,Astrée and Auvidis, and from 1998 to 2008 for Aliavox. This anthology, contains vocal pieces directly related to the theme of love, such as the innovative Airs for the recitar cantando of Giulio Caccini's Le Nuove Musiche, the evocative tonos humanos by Spanish Baroque composers Sebastián Durón, Juan del Vado and Juan Hidalgo, Monteverdi's sublime Lamento della Ninfa, the mysterious folia Yo soy la locura by Henri du Bailly, not forgetting the touching Elizabethan lullaby and the tender melody Une jeune fillette, both by anonymous authors, but equally remarkable for their great beauty and depth of emotion. The various instrumental pieces, with such evocative titles as the Gaillarde "La Barcha del mio Amore" by Giacomo de Gorzanis, Samuel Scheidt's Pavane and his "Courant dolorosa", the Elizabethan "Desperada" and the highly popular improvisation piece, "Greensleeves", as well as the great Jean-Baptiste Lully's Rondeau from Le Mariage forcé and the Chaconne from L'Amour Médecin, provide the necessary complement to the vocal pieces, resulting in a great variety of sources and contrasting characters. The Barcha d'Amore is the personal testimony of Jordi Savall's unwavering and rigorous commitment to the performance of music from the Middle Ages to the age of Classicism using 'historically informed' instruments and performance techniques, which emerged in the 1970s.Those years marked the beginning of a great revival in the performance of pre-Romantic music, a continuing revival which offers the possibility of retrieving an important cultural legacy.