Under the title Beethoven Revolution, Alia Vox publishes the second volume of a complete Beethoven symphonies by Jordi Savall. Like the first album, these three discs, bringing together the Symphonies notbone 6 at 9, plunge us into a unique and exciting sound and musical universe, chiselled down to the smallest detail. The duty spoke with the Catalan musician about his vision of this universe, in which we did not expect him.
“The success of these recordings, the fact that they inspire you, comes from the fact that they convey the joy of 60 musicians who do their work with great passion. It’s difficult with a symphony orchestra that plays every day; there is not that same joy. And imagine this joy in a time of canceled concerts, where we found ourselves at the collegiate church of the castle of Cardona in Catalonia like in an island to play this divine music. It was a gift and a miracle. »
Joy, the musicians gathered around Jordi Savall carry it with them well beyond the recording sessions. Symphonies nbone 6 and 7 filmed at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg was published on YouTube last December. We then spoke to you, at Christmas, of the exceptional and radiant Pastoral as part of the concerts not to be missed on the Web. We see, mixed, seasoned instrumentalists and young musicians. This is one of the principles that guided the chef’s approach.
Rediscover music
“It had been several years since I had decided to take up Beethoven’s symphonies, to approach the study of the scores from the original autographs and manuscripts and to imagine how it could sound by following the precise indications, characters of the tempos, articulations of Beethoven himself, completely disregarding what I had heard before. But I was wondering how to do it”, confides the chef to the Duty.
So Jordi Savall starts with two ideas: take the time to work hard, then give himself the time to pass on his ideas to young people. “I imagined “Beethoven academies” organized from 2019 and I divided the symphonies into four programs (1, 2 and 4; 3 and 5; 6 and 7; 8 and 9). Each program gave rise to two academies of six days each with six hours of intense work per day. The first academy with master classes, individual and group work, was based on articulation, phrasing, dynamics, as well as all aesthetic and historical aspects. The second academy, of pooling, culminated in the recording sessions.
Listening to Jordi Savall’s Beethoven, in the 2020 sessions as in the album from the 2019 academies, we are struck by the timbres of the old instruments, by the polyphonic readability, but also and above all by the intelligence of the articulations, phrasings and instrumental dosages. There is an imagination there in the colors and the beat of the music which is coupled with an exceptional quality of production, a logical result of the way the project was conceived.
Aesthetically, it’s time for stripping: “Beethoven has obviously changed things in an incredible way, but he has the orchestra of Mozart and Haydn, and this instrument comes to him from Rameau, Gluck, Bach and Handel. Even though the instruments have improved a bit, even though there are new elements, the basis of the performance technique has nothing to do with Brahms, Schumann or Bruckner. »
“I wanted to work on Beethoven like I worked on my viola da gamba with Marin Marais. When I started I couldn’t get a clue how this music sounded. All the old violists were dead. We had to find the style by playing the music. First, we try to set the tempo. Next, the articulation issues need to be resolved. It is a thorough job. When we operate in this way, we discover the music. »
Compose for the future
The great risk was, by dint of work, to kill all spontaneity. But we find in these recordings a jubilation of collective emulation, the only equivalent of which until now was with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie and Paavo Järvi some fifteen years ago.
It all started with the work of the sections of the orchestra: “I had given instructions to the heads of the section. I also had a lot of ideas on movements. But when it came time to put the pieces of the puzzle together, not everything was going as planned. “We discovered that the music required other things,” says the conductor, who swears he has never been a prisoner of his initial ideas. “Music speaks and as we had time to ring it and experiment, we saw that it suggested things to us that we would never have found if we hadn’t taken all that time. »
The symphony that caused the most problems was the Eighth. “It really is an extraordinary symphony. It’s a gem, but everything is pushed to a climax. The musicians said, “We can’t play that.” I answered them: “What you say there, the musicians said it to Beethoven and he retorted to them: ‘What I wrote is perfectly playable.’ When the question arose with quartets, Beethoven answered them: ‘Do you think that I take care of your miserable strings? I’m not composing for you, I’m composing for the future.’”
“Beethoven thought of an ideal music and his deafness made him feel the power of music internally, sums up Jordi Savall. It is this inner strength that I sought to rediscover. The difficulty of Eighth is that it has to sound easy, then it isn’t. »
But if Beethoven was composing the music of the future, why the magnificent slow movement of the Ninth would it be subservient to a rhetoric that looks to the past as in Savall’s recording? Could we not imagine a form of slow, sensitive movement, precursor of romanticism? Jordi Savall has fun with the question. “I didn’t want to give in to this form of facility, because I was sure that the musicians could, in the right tempo, find the freedom to phrase and give the necessary expression. I kept a greater flexibility. Everything flows. The natural tempo is perfect and I swear we spent many hours there. The idea of playing this slower movement maybe comes when you have an orchestra of 120 musicians, not 60.”
The 9and Symphony was supposed to be recorded in Wroclaw, Poland in October 2020. But the plan got out of hand. “We were stuck. Singers got infected with COVID, I got infected myself, and part of the orchestra, and we couldn’t finish the recording. I took advantage of the fact that we gave the 9and in Bonn and several locations in October 2021 to record it. »
In this second album, it is the 7and Symphony which surprises the most by its vertical and peremptory side, almost in line with the 3and and 5and Symphonies. “We talked a lot, for this symphony, of an apotheosis of rhythm, but also of expression. 1er movement requires ruthless direction to result in an explosion. The slow movement is a rare moment of humanity and revolution. Remember that he was the subject of a revolutionary four-voice song, which I presented in the project millennial Venice. In the final movement there is an extraordinary use of force and power. It’s an incredible explosion of joy for someone who suffered so much. »
Regardless of how one looks at Jordi Savall’s approach, the Catalan musician must be credited with qualities that are becoming rare: the strong organic unity, the power of the dramatic continuum and, within this here, sentences that have a meaning, are born and end. “It’s an essential part of my musical taste, admits the musician. I was born with polyphony and trained in the world of polyphony where what matters is direction. One cannot make a coherent phrasing if one does not have the final intention. The goal has been achieved: the Catalan musician has created a winning combination of around twenty young musicians from all walks of life and his faithful instrumentalists. Together, they knew how to lead Beethoven safely.