Jordi Savall opens the festival that bears his name this Friday 28 July at 10 p.m. at the Convent of Sant Francesc in Montblanc with a concert entitled Dialogues of Memory and Spirit which he will share with the musicians Hakan Güngor and Dimitri Psonis, members of the ensemble Hespèrion XXI, to perform Christian, Jewish and Muslim music from the traditions of the Mediterranean area.
This will be the first concert – which has already sold out – of the fourteen musical proposals offered by the Jordi Savall Festival between 28 July and 15 August 2023, which will fill the spaces of the Convent of Sant Francesc de Montblanc, the Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Poblet and the Royal Monastery of Santes Creus with music.
The third edition will be opened with the inaugural manifesto by the journalist and philosopher Carolin Emcke, one of Germany’s leading intellectual personalities. Philosopher, writer and journalist graduated in Harvard, London and Frankfurt and teacher at Yale University, she has worked as a reporter and journalist in different countries in conflict like Irak, Afganistan, Colombia o Kosovo. Her work as philosopher is focused in the struggle for peace and intercultural dialogue (Contra el odio, 2016, Weil es sagbar ist, 2013) and in feminism, human rights and LGTBI+ (Ja heisst ja, 2019, How we desire, 2014) and she is focused in aspects such as ecology and environmental issues. She has published a dozen books and she has been distinguished with the Friedenpreis des Deutschen Buchhandels in 2016. She speaks fluently Spanish and she will write and read the opening speech of the festival 2023, dedicated with such care and conscience to life and, in particular, to homage women, to the heroines and to promote memory, intercultural dialogue and environmental conscience.
El Festival Jordi Savall complete its musical offer with three conferences (Santes Creus, August 11th, 12th and 15th) with the writer and politics expert Nazanin Armanian, the historian of art Mar Medinyà and the historian and medievalist Maria del Coral Cuadrada.
First days of the Jordi Savall Festival in Montblanc and Poblet
The Jordi Savall Festival continues the following day, 29 July, with another concert at the Royal Monastery of Poblet with La Jove Capella Reial de Catalunya, conducted by the singer and conductor Lluís Vilamajó, entitled Caminos del alma (Paths of the Soul) which will take a musical journey from the polyphony of Francisco Guerrero and Cristóbal de Morales, to the modernity of Arvo Pärt and Patricia van Ness or Bernat Vivancos. This concert is also sold out.
Sunday 30 July at 7 p.m., again in the Convent of San Francisco de Montblanc, the concert entitled Catalunya, comtat gran. Time of battles, songs of deeds and laments. From the Revolta dels Segadors to the capitulation of Barcelona and the Decree of the New Plant (1640-1717), in which the Capella Reial de Catalunya and Hespèrion XXI, conducted by Jordi Savall, will perform musical works from this historical period with pieces by European and anonymous composers and by Joan Cabanilles.
Homage to women and nature: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Festival will continue at the Royal Monastery of Santes Creus from 11 to 15 August with an afternoon and evening program dedicated to women musicians and to those who continue to fight for their rights, as in the concert Musics for Life and Freedom, (11 August at 10 p.m. in the Plaça Bernat Calvó) with the participation of the singers Básela Abouham Abouham and Basel Abouham. 00 hours in the Plaza Bernat Calvó) with the participation of the singers Básela Abouhamed from Palestine, Jasmin Behnawa from Afghanistan, Waed Bouhassoun from Syria and Nazanin Saveh from Iran, together with the ensemble Orpheus 21 conducted by Jordi Savall.
Among the eleven concerts to be held at Santes Creus, the one to be conducted by Jordi Savall at the head of Le Concert des Nations Féminin on Sunday 13th August, with The Four Seasons and other concertos by Vivaldi in homage to the women musicians of the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, with the violinist Alfia Bakieva as concertmaster and soloist, is particularly noteworthly. The Festival has also programmed evening concerts at 19.30, with groups such as Hirundo Maris, The Ministers of Pastime or the participation of the Ukrainian early music group Liatoshinsky Capella, together with the liturgic Jewish songs in Alger by Miléna Kartowski-Aïach, y Sharon Avivi, the Romantic sonatas by the violinist Lina Tur Bonet with the pianist Olga Pashchenko and the trio of the Cuban singer Teresa Yanet.
Jordi Savall will offer two more programs with Monteverdi pieces and from other composers of his time, The Muses Tears and Fire and the program Stabat Mater with la Capella Reial de Catalunya and Le Concert des Nations. the festival will culminate on 15 August in the Plaça Bernat Calvó with the Songs of Nature by Fanny Mendelssohn, sister of Felix Mendelssohn, from which Savall will conduct A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the participation of La Capella Nacional de Catalunya and Olga Pashchenko on pianoforte with the actors Sílvia Bel, Jordi Boixaderas, Laura Aubert, Joan Esteve, Jaume Madaula, Joana and Mireia Vilapuig, who will act as reciters directed by Pau Carrió.
Buses & Visits
Festival Jordi Savall offers a bus service servicio de autocares to go to the night concerts at Monasterio de Santes Creus departuring from Barcelona, Tarragona and Reus.
It also includes guided tours in this monastery and a gastronomic place everyday from 19.00 hours.
Poster artwork by Francesca Llopis.
Share