JORDI SAVALI: ISTANBUL

The Times
December 18, 2009

Jordi Savall’s newest and attractive exploration of ancient music
from the lands where the Orient and Occident meet Geoff Brown

Recommend?

Whatever happens with the proposed BA strike, you can still get away
at Christmas. All it takes is a track or two from Jordi Savall’s
newest exploration of ancient music from the lands where the Orient
and Occident meet. No King’s College Chapel carols, no congregational
hymns: Istanbul offers art music from the 17th-century Ottoman court,
streaked through with improvisations and the traditional music of
Armenia or the Sephardic Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula.

Whatever the tradition, Western scales are a universe away. We
manoeuvre instead through the micro-intervals of the Turkish makams
and other modal equivalents. Rhythms have their own peculiarities:
if you try counting beats in some of these pieces, you’ll run short
of fingers.

The music presented is instrumental, though so many pieces seem like
songs without words, driven onwards by a single melody line seasoned
with low-pitched drones, decorative twirls or a simple, intoxicating
percussion tattoo. Savall’s musicians of Hespèrion XXI and other
invited guests beguile us armed with the duduk, ney, oud, kamancha,
tanbur: ethnic wind and string instruments whose imploring or tangy
hues can defy pocket description. Sometimes the duduk resembles a
bassoon with a cold; other times, tender beauties trickle forth,
as on track 12, an Armenian lament. But whatever the tone colours,
whether the culture is Muslim, Jewish or something cross-hatched,
this music radiates heat and pulls you hypnotised into its coils.

The core material, the Ottoman court music, is drawn from specimens
notated by the multi-talented figure of Dimitrie Cantemir (philosopher,
linguist, historian, musician, Prince of Moldavia), collected in his
Book of the Science of Music, presented in the early 17th century to
Sultan Ahmed II. Before each selection, following original practice,
an improvisation unfolds, brief enough never to outstay its welcome
for Western ears. No doubt the entire selection reflects Western ears –
Savall is a proud Catalan. But the passion and gusto of his Hespèrion
players, expanded with guests from Morocco, Greece, Armenia and Israel,
remain joyfully authentic.

As usual, AliaVox’s packaging is learned and attractive, though it’s
a pity that room wasn’t found for a pictorial guide to the instruments.

Something like that would make newcomers to the field feel much more
at home.