Manresa, Mare Nostrum
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| © David Ignaszewski |
"Remember the time when we had so
much in common ." said Jordi Savall making the primary Mediterranean
vibrate , fertile and protector womb, systematically raped, desired vulva under
a continuos risk of mutilation , erotic wind , fleashy, of violent evolution
and death always as a warm breeze feeding pine and olive trees with one hand and
fanciful shapes dunes with the other.
A historical introduction showed the
literary value of the Mediterranean Sea , the Mare Nostrum which is not so , or
only in part, a sea which received so various names as cultures it washes. Our
Mediterranean Sea is the White Sea for Turks , the same sea as Amos Oz wrote being
always so different at the same time. The announced repertoire was a truly trip
although I was surprised by the lack of Hispanic pieces . Algeria , Israel ,
France , Turkey, Occitania , Italy , Bulgaria , Cyprus, Greece and Morocco , from
the side of the White Sea of Turks, and Romania and Moldova from the side of
the Black Sea , with a final improvisation, was an intense and calm tour of a
few friends in the current times of immediacy .
Jordi Savall presented for the first
time his Hespèrion XXI in Manresa, in the proper context of the Fira
Mediterrània and conducting an orchestra integrated by singers Lior Elmaleh and
Gürsoy Dincer , at the Kaval teh Bulgarian Nedyalko Nedyalkov, at the oud the
Moroccan Driss Meolumi adn the Israeli Yair Dalal , at the kannun the Turkish Hakan
Güngör, at the santur the Greek Dimitri Psonis, the Spanish percussionist Pedro
Estevan and at the Viel arc , the rebab and conduction, Jordi Savall . The performance
was superb and sober, maintaining in an excellent way the hard pulse as a mantra
required by these kind of pieces due to their spiritual background far from any
formal variation , aspect that may embarrass an audience more accustomed to
quick-change proposals and forms related to the popular music from the street.
Lounge music played by Hespèrion XXI is part of our ancestral traditions of
Mediterranean cultures , deeply linked to East in the beginning, and often cultivated
in the religious context, and being the cradle of classical music after all .
It becomes a difficult mirror hard to be assumed from the current perspective ,
as if everything that is essential for us had disappeared forever to the point
of incomprehension . To others , however, it wakes us rhythms that take us to
places we've never walked but we feel partly our home, as it really was .
The Hespèrion XXI project is a
continuation of the Hespèrion XX founded in 1974 by Jordi Savall , Montserrat
Figueras , Lorenzo Alpert and Hopkinson Smith. Hesperia was the ancient name given to the two most western
peninsulas of Europe: Italian and Iberian . As explained to us by the founders
of the project, in ancient Greek , Hesperio
meant " come from these two peninsulas " and that was also the name
given to the planet Venus when it appeared in the West at night. The motor of
the project is the research from the Baroque music going back and reclaiming
the medieval and Renaissance repertoire . To rebuild the wealth of the European
music from the X to the XVIII century and to confront it with the discovered in
the new world , the Middle East and the Far East , looking for the many points and
sometimes mysterious aspects they have in
common , often forgotten , and to let creativity fly in their differences,
becomes a social lesson especially at a time where the cultural differences , widespread
but not at all accepted, they are often seen more as a problem than as
enrichment , which they are certainly and without which we are all orphans of
any humanity.
Jordi Savall | Videos here
Text by Juan Carlos Romero
Hespèrion XXI website www.alia-vox.com
Photo by David Ignaszewski
Courtesy of Fira Mediterrània de Manresa
Fira Mediterrània de Manresa website www.firamediterrania.cat
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