Customer Reviews

Jordi Savall, Dominique Fernandez: Lachrimae Caravaggio [Hybrid SACD]

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I love Caravaggio's paintings. I've had a great time hunting them down in the churches of Rome and viewing them. They are works of heart-searching beauty, with their sombre shading and meditative sorrow. Jordi Savall's piece does them justice; it is very beautiful music, darkly harmonic and though it contrasts from movement to movement within the Statia, all is integrated in form and theme. The viol da gamba voice is especially heart-rending. I find myself hungering for Lachrimae Caravaggio and listening to it every day. Studying Caravaggio's prints while listening is a totally satisfying aesthetic experience.

During the XVI and the XVIII centuries, the ideal work of art was conceived as a combination of painting, music, writing and sculpture. The most dazzling expressions of this quest for the ideal piece of art were the Opera and the Theatre, where musicians combined their talents with writers, painters, architects and carvers to materialize a given drama on stage. Musician Jordi Savall, his collaborators and Dominique Fernandez have followed the footsteps of this ideal in order to create Lachrimae Caravaggio, an album composed by a set of music pieces and a collection of essays inspired in paintings created by Michaelangelo Merissi (commonly known as Caravaggio) in the XVII century in Italy.
The music featured in the album is a collection of improvisations and versions of works by Monteverdi and other Baroque musicians, although the album it is not a compilation of specific pieces of Early Music per se: On the one hand, the music follows the conventions and the mysticism of baroque esthetics, but on the other hand the improvisations and the vocals add a touch of contemporaneous rhythms. This point is significant as the convergence of both types of music create a deep and beautiful musical experience which recreates and recalls the contrast between light and shadows present in the work and the life of Caravaggio, a topic also recalled and explored in the essays by Fernandez included in the album, making this album a delightful experience highly recommended.

First off, I am a longtime admirer of Jordi Savall and had the great pleasure this year of attending a concert given by Hesperion XXI this year. Being fired up by this experience, I was interested in the more recent recordings by Jordi Savall and came across Lachrimae Caravaggio.

As has been noted by the excellent prior review, this disc is the result of an exhibition of Caravaggio's paintings in Barcelona at the Museum of Catalan Art. The majority of the music is improvised by Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXI with pieces by Gesualdo and Trabaci. The pieces by Mr. Savall are based on a melody of the period that is first heard in the first selection - the Cantus Caravaggio I - and continues to the last piece in the collection. There are also pieces entitled Deplorationes that include wordless voice sung by Ferran Savall that are very moving and sound so full of despair. As I listened to the music it was clear that this is excellent mood music to accompany the paintings of Caravaggio, particularly if looking at the originals, but after a single hearing I had had enough.

The problem for me is that there is little variation in the music so that one piece sounds very much like the one that preceded it. After several minutes of listening I was wondering if the tempo might change to something livelier. The performances are beautifully executed but, sorry to say, this is not a disc that I want to listen to with any regularity. I think that listening to the excerpts of the music available at Amazon will bear out the elegiac mood of all of the pieces; all beautifully played but all so much the same. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this disc, despite the fact that it is beautifully produced with an equally fine booklet.

I think this is one of the most amazing recordings I have ever heard. The music is very majestic and unalterably sad, but it contains a beauty wich stuns me just thinking about it. If you listen you will be greatly moved. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to hear music that will have a lasting effect on you.

Jordi Savall continuously amazes with this heart-wrenching album. I first came across Jordi Savall in an Amazon Sampler and I've become a regular customer, and when I discovered this album, I couldn't resist buying it. It is so profoundly beautiful. Two phrases best describe this album: Heart-wrenching, and, Profound. The strings of the viol seem like heart strings, and there is a profound sadness which permeates the listener. This sadness is cathartic though, and indeed refreshing. The title "Lachrimae Caravaggio" provides the listener with a good template to begin their thoughts while listening. However, the title is unnecessary, as the music itself paints a picture in the listeners mind and leaves a deep impression. I cannot recommend this album enough.

When one thinks of perfection, Bach comes to mind. But this isn't Bach. This is Jordi Savall. Jordi Savall is widely credited with the rebirth of the viola da gamba. Here he acts as a composer and conductor. His style is sophisticated, baroque (Gesualdo, Monteverdi) with some touches of Pärt. A few tracks are sung and sound oriental, while the whole album is like a soundtrack by "il maestro" Morricone. This is deeply moving, slow, polyphonic music, played on original (old) instruments.
Although these are variations on a very beautiful melody, the variations exploit all techniques that an extraordinary composer like Bach had at his disposal.