Night of the Three Kings in Versailles Baroque
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Performers: Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations
Place and date: Peralada Festival. Iglesia del Carmen (July 31, 2023)
What would the music promoted by the Luises in Versailles have been like in our time without the long task of Jordi Savall in terms of recovery and interpretation especially?
Marin Marais and Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe might not have revived with such force. Today they occupy the musical horizons of music lovers, particularly those devoted to what is called ancient music, and the excellent interpretations of Savall with his famous seven-string Barak Norman viola fill their corners, in which melancholy alternates (who said that those eighteenth-century courtiers weren’t also romantic?) and dancing vitality.
This concert was a vital return to the origins of Savall and others who have accompanied him for years, such as the violinist Kramer, the gambista Pierlot, the flutist Zebley or Pedro Estevan and their subtle percussions… Marco Vitale on harpsichord and Enrique Solinis on guitar and theorbo with subtle glosses completed the group in a global work by Savall.
The maestro is also usually communicative, adding comments of great interest, but which barely reached the front rows, in a full church that closed the concert with fervent applause.
Moments of great interest and high level of performance in technique and expression: Le rétour a dos violas de Sainte Colombe (Savall and the excellent Philippe Pierlot), or the Couplets de Folies d’Espagne by Marin Marais and a fantastic Couperin, who passed to the stage of Louis XV.
Debussy looked at Couperin and Rameau, well supported by Ricard Viñes and the ideas of Pedrell, who in turn urged his people to recover Scarlatti, the genesis of great changes along with the old Russian modes of the early years of the 20th century. Times when Russians spoke French.
The stage of Louis XV was musicalized here by pieces by Jean-Féry Rebel and Jean-Marie Leclair that completed a monographic program in the hands of these magnificent performers. The masterful violas da gamba by Savall and Pierlot led me to wonder if we have equivalents here –as there are already in other instruments or countries– in the new generation. I don’t know if a school has been established, and intergenerational transmission is very important.
