Orient Occident (1000 - 1600)Instrumental music from ancient Christian, Jewish and Muslim Spain,
medieval Italy and Morocco, Israel, Persian Afghanistan and the ancient
Ottoman Empire.
Driss El Maloumi (oud), Dimitris Psonis (santur, saz), Yair Dalal (oud), Pedro Estevan (darbouka, tambor, pandereta, riq-gunga), Khaled Arman (rubâb), Osman Arman (tulak flute) & Seiar Hashimi (tablas & zirbaghali) Jordi Savall (viola, rebab, lira, director) Featuring blurbs by the writer Amin Maalouf, this wellresearched
album combines the foremost musicians of both ancient
Western and traditional Oriental music. "Finding the common ground that can symbolise a shared humanity has been the impulse for Daniel
Barenboim and Edward Said's West East Divan Orchestra and, more recently, violinist Daniel Hope's East
Meets West collaboration.Yet for some 30 years, Catalan early music guru Jordi Savall has embodied precisely
the same ideals with his ensemble Hespèrion XXI.Their Orient-Occident project creates a flowing dialogue of
music from Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions and medieval times, when the Mediterranean helped to link
rather than divide cultures.
Hespèrion's performances may be the result of painstaking scholarship, but it is not so
much the dust of medieval manuscripts as that of the desert that makes these latterday
troubadours so compelling.
Savall's virtuosity is so understated as to risk being taken for granted, but the defining
rhythmic discipline, the mutual understanding that permits brief flights of improvisational
fancy, has a powerful effect. Prayers, dances and laments seemed to bubble up from the
same wellspring of experience, voice and instruments echoing each other in assent,
crossing great divides." The Guardian, June 13th |
