Jordi Savall at the Premiere Festival 2024-25 Beyond Baroque Season

Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI perform “The Tears and The Fire of the Muses” at the Premiere Festival of the 2024-25 Beyond Baroque Season, exploring Monteverdi and his contemporaries alongside La Capella Reial de Catalunya.

For more than 50 years, Jordi Savall, one of the most versatile musical personalities of his generation, has rescued musical gems from the obscurity of neglect and given them back for all to enjoy. His activities as a concert performer, teacher, researcher and creator of new musical and cultural projects have made him a leading figure in the reappraisal of historical music. Together with Montserrat Figueras, he founded Hespèrion XXI in 1974.

Program

In The Tears and The Fire of the Muses, Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI are joined by soloists from La Capella Reial de Catalunya for a program exploring the music of Monteverdi and his contemporaries.

In this program, Jordi Savall showcases Monteverdi’s influence on composers from England and Germany. The audience will enjoy works by Samuel Scheidt, a captivating Lutheran composer from the early 17th century who embraced the expressive techniques of the Italian madrigal. They will also explore the music of Anthony Holborne and John Dowland, who often used melancholy and lament to create a closer connection between text and music, emphasizing the words through musical means. This concert presents both the tears—the lament and sorrow—and the fire—the anger and helplessness—of the muses.

Jordi Savall

With his key participation in Alain Corneau’s film Tous les Matins du Monde (awarded the César Cinema Prize for the best soundtrack), his intense concert activity (about 140 concerts per year), his record releases (six recordings per year) and the creation in 1998, together with Montserrat Figueras, of his own record label, Alia Vox, Jordi Savall has shown that early music does not have to be elitist, but rather that it appeals to an increasingly wide and diverse audience of all age groups.

Savall has recorded and released more than 230 albums covering the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Classical music repertories, with a special focus on the Hispanic and Mediterranean musical heritage, receiving many awards and distinctions such as the Midem Classical Award, the International Classical Music Award, and a Grammy Award. His concert programs have made music an instrument of mediation to achieve understanding and peace between different and sometimes warring peoples and cultures. Accordingly, guest artists appearing with his ensembles include Arab, Israeli, Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Afghan, Mexican and North American musicians. In 2008, Jordi Savall was appointed European Union Ambassador for intercultural dialogue and, together with Montserrat Figueras, was named “Artist for Peace” under the UNESCO Goodwill Ambassadors program.

Between 2020 and 2021, to mark Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th anniversary, he conducted the complete symphonies with Le Concert des Nations and recorded them in two collections entitled Beethoven Révolution. The impact they have had worldwide has been defined as “a miracle” (Fanfare), and volume II has been distinguished with the Schallplattenkritik Prize for the best orchestral record.

Jordi Savall’s prolific musical career has brought him the highest national and international distinctions, including honorary doctorates from the Universities of Evora (Portugal), Barcelona (Catalonia), Louvain (Belgium) and Basel (Switzerland), the order of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (France), the Praetorius Music Prize awarded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of Lower Saxony, the Gold Medal of the Generalitat of Catalonia, the Helena Vaz da Silva Award, and the prestigious Léonie Sonning Prize, which is considered the Nobel prize of the music world. Recently, he has been elected Honorary Member by the Royal Philharmonic Society, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and la Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.