SAVALL'S VESPERS

posted by James Reel

Having just played a Jordi Savall recording of Marin Marais on the air, I remembered that his recording of Monteverdi's Vespers, one of the best ever, is back in print in better sound than ever before. Here's the review I wrote for Fanfare:

MONTEVERDI Vespro della Beata Vergine • Jordi Savall, cond; soloists; La Capella Reial; Coro del Centro Musica Antica di Padova; Schola Gregoriana • ALIA VOX AVSA 9855 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 95:43)

This is not a new recording, but a multichannel re-mastering of an old favorite: Jordi Savall’s highly Mediterranean 1988 account, recorded in Mantua’s Santa Barbara Basilica, where Monteverdi may or may not have first heard this music. Given the locale, Savall interpolates antiphons associated with the Feast of St. Barbara, and if you object to this, well, it’s only a few seconds of chant here and there that are separately tracked. He leaves out, as so many do, the second version of the Magnificat and the Missa in illo tempore. The performing forces include a smallish but colorful instrumental complement (not the 30 pieces Monteverdi may have used in at least one performance), a male quintet for the plainchant, a 32-voice choir and the usual complement of soloists.

Javall’s way with the Vespers is both sensual and devotional; tempos are on the slow side (akin to those of the more recent King on Hyperion, also on SACD), and there is a tremendous warmth to every moment (compare to the “whiter” voices of the leading English versions: Pickett, Parrott, Gardiner and especially the chilly McCreesh). The choral production is characterful rather than silken; Savall admits as much in a new introduction he wrote for the booklet: “United by the common bond of our very ‘Latin’ voices and sensibility, we all pursued an ideal approach to song, one in which declamation of the text and purity of sound were inextricably linked to an essential warmth and profound spirituality of performance.” Well, Savall just wrote my review for me.

Compared to the original Astrée set (I never encountered the more recent budget repackaging), this Alia Vox revamping is clearly superior. To begin with, the packaging is more lavish, with color illustrations, a bit more introductory material and translations into more languages (helpful if you are Catalan), although this means the texts and translations can no longer be given side-by-side. The sonics were quite good to begin with—a complex variety of forces captured only with a pair of omnidirectional microphones—but here the sound is even lovelier; rear-channel ambience provides a better sense of the basilica’s natural acoustics, while the performers seem to have been pulled just a bit closer to the listener than before, resulting in a hard-to-achieve clarity within a generous space. For nearly 30 years, Savall’s has been one of the finest versions of the Vespers on the market, and this Alia Vox revivification makes it even more attractive.