A belated thank you for your support, Antonio.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Jordi Savall - LES ÉLÉMENTS: Tempêtes, Orages & Fêtes Marines


Information

Composer: Jean-Féry Rebel; Matthew Locke; Antonio Vivaldi; Marin Marais; Georg Philipp Telemann; Jean-Philippe Rameau

CD1:
  • (01-12) Rebel - Les Éléments
  • (13-23) Locke - Music for 'The Tempest'
  • (24-26) Vivaldi - Concerto in F 'La Tempesta di mare' per Flauto solo e corde (RV 433 Op. 10 Nr. 1)
CD2:
  • (01-06) Marais - Airs pour les Matelots et les Tritons (from 'Alcione')
  • (07-16) Telemann - Wassermusik, Hamburger Ebb und Fluth
  • (17-21) Rameau - Orages et tonnerres

Le Concert des Nations
Jordi Savall, conductor

Date: 2015
Label: Alia Vox


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Review

They hadn’t heard of global warming in the time of Rebel, Marais and Rameau, and to come across this two-disc set of floods, storms and gales in the soggy last days of 2015, and then read Jordi Savall’s booklet-note call to respect the planet, is apt to summon sobering reflections. Not so the music itself, however, which, if in itself unlikely to change the climate, is as invigorating as a walk on a windy day. Recorded live in Fontfroide Abbey in Narbonne at a concert entitled ‘Terra nostra: Homage to the Earth’, it offers ‘marine festivals’ alongside the tempests and is for the most part rather jolly and tuneful.

Most of the music has origins in the theatre, where in Baroque times storms could be potent plot-worriers. Thus we have a short suite from Marais’s opera Alcyone, in which a ‘tempête’ sits among music for lusty matelots and a chaconne for tritons; another short suite drawn from four Rameau operas in which Boreas blows but all ends in a contredanse; Matthew Locke’s fascinatingly angular and melodically unpredictable music for a 1674 production of The Tempest in which, despite the evocatively gathered squall of its innocuously titled ‘Curtain Tune’, the final number is a strictly ordered canon; and Rebel’s ballet Les élémens, with its sensational opening seven-note crunch-chord of chaos. Away from the stage, there is Vivaldi’s well-known Tempesta di mare flute concerto (played here on recorder), and Telemann’s delicious and fluidly playful Hamburger Ebb und Fluth suite – if only today’s flood defences could work as serenely as the Hamburg sluices apparently depicted in this work’s gigue movement!

Jordi Savall directs with typical grandeur and depth of tone. The subject-matter means plenty of work for the two-man wind machine and rumbling drum department, but there is exquisite contrast too in, say, the fluty stillness of Marais’s Ritournelle or the exquisitely graceful ‘sleeping Thetis’ Sarabande of the Telemann. Not everything about a live concert always transfers well to disc. The Vivaldi concerto comes across as stodgy, and the ample acoustic provokes the kind of ensemble problems in the Telemann overture that one imagines would not have survived a studio recording. There are noises too (some, I fancy, coming from the conductor), but the enthusiastic audience participation in the encore – a Rameau contredanse – leaves one in no doubt that a good time was had by all. Whatever was on their minds by then, it wasn’t rising water levels.

-- Lindsay Kemp, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2016/May/Elements_AVSA9914.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/10/les-elements-tempetes-orages-review-jordi-savall-le-concert-des-nations
https://www.audaud.com/les-elements-tempests-storms-and-marine-festivals-music-of-locke-marais-rameau-rebel-telemann-others-jordi-savall-alia-vox-2-discs/
http://www.allmusic.com/album/les-%C3l%C3%A9ments-temp%C3%AAtes-orages-f%C3%AAtes-marines-mw0002896908https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Tempetes-Orages-Fetes-Marines/dp/B016ECLXY4

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Jordi Savall (born August 1, 1941) is a Catalan conductor, viol player, and composer. He has been one of the major figures in the field of Western early music since the 1970s, largely responsible for reviving the use of viol family instruments (notably the viola da gamba) in contemporary performance and recording. His characteristic repertoire features Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music, although he has occasionally ventured into the Classical and even the Romantic periods. Savall's discography includes more than 100 recordings on EMI Classics, Astrée, and his own label, Alia Vox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordi_Savall

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9 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice to see this blog get political! Tell it, brother!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello Ronald -
    Would greatly appreciate you reposting these discs when you have time.
    Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Choose one link, copy it to your browser's address bar, wait 5 seconds, then click on 'Skip Ad' (or 'Continue') (top right).
    If you are asked to download anything, IGNORE, only download from file hosting site (mega.nz).
    If MEGA shows 'Bandwidth Limit Exceeded' message, try to create a free account.

    CD1
    http://locinealy.com/4LiR
    or
    http://uii.io/lSQL1x

    CD2
    http://locinealy.com/4LiS
    or
    http://uii.io/3bJ5u

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hello -
    Just to say thank you for reposting this disc. I would have thanked you sooner but when you redesigned the site you took out the list of composers/performers and the search facility so I couldn't find it! Thank you for putting back the search box.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That list slows down the whole page, so I have to move it. Below the cover, there is a button called "Labels/Tags". That's where the list is located now, on a separate page.

      Delete
  6. Greetings friend Ronald Do, can you re-up this disc from your other page, please?

    https://musiqclassiq.blogspot.com/2021/10/georg-philipp-telemann-complete-violin.html

    Thanks a lot in advance.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Telemann Violin Concertos vol. 7
      https://mir.cr/VZW1NCZZ

      Delete
  7. Thank you very much friend Ronald Do. Greetings

    ReplyDelete