JORDI SAVALL: JERUSALEM
Geoff Brown
The Times
January 23, 2009
Given electric performances and virile repertoire, early music
regularly offers uplifting experiences, but do they hit you like
bulletins ripped from today’s news? Not often.
Matters are different in Jerusalem. Time and again the 52 tracks of
Jordi Savall’s bumper project bring you slap up against the continuing
tragedy of Gaza — of wrecked buildings, wailing people, and faiths
at war.
"There will be a great peace throughout the world, until the end of
time," sings Montserrat Figueras on track two, following the Greek
text of a Sibylline oracle.
The rest of the programme uses the history of Jerusalem to plead for
that elusive world peace. Jews, Christians, Arabs, Turks, Armenians
are all given a voice in music and words from across the centuries,
with different religions and cultures battling for dominance and a
homeland as the end of time ticks closer.
The two CDs are housed in a book of 435 pages. Navigating its eight
languages can be fiddly. You need a taste, too, for the music of
incantation, for plangent voices sobbing in tandem with the oud,
the ney and other stalwarts of world music.
Yet as Savall and Manuel Forcano’s collection advances, the heart is
still moved, the mind still whirrs. Whatever the language and culture
adopted, Figueras throbs with humanity. Instrumentally, Savall ,
Hespèrion XXI and their guests always give us splendour. Track by
track you listen, learn, read and wonder. Jerusalem may not bring
world peace any closer, but you’ll never read the Gaza headlines in
quite the same way again.
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