MUSIC REVIEWS : Early Music Program From Savall, Company

Jordi Savall, who set toes tapping and record-store cash registers ringing with his contributions to the 1992 Gerard Depardieu film “Tous les Matins du Monde,” brought the singers of his Capella Reial de Catalunya and instrumentalists of Hesperion XX to Ambassador Auditorium on Wednesday for an evening of 16th- and 17th-Century music.

Savall’s own legendary skills as a performer on the viola da gamba, on this occasion the violin-sized soprano, were on display throughout the evening, making clear why his talents have created a worldwide renaissance of interest in the gamba family.

There was no shortage of fascinating music on display, as the vocal quintet and instrumentalists (three gambas, violone, harp, percussion and harpsichord) delivered “Una Sanosa Porfia” by Juan del Enzina (1468-1529), a depiction, from the vanquished Moors’ point of view, of the strength of the divinely protected armies of Ferdinand and Isabella.

And there was programming genius in the bracketing of a pair of Monteverdi’s most dramatic madrigals, “Gira il Nemico” and “Lamento della Ninfa,” with grave instrumentals by his contemporary, Samuel Scheidt.

But these Monteverdis, and the same composer’s “Tirsi e Clori,” were also marked by an alarming lack of momentum and intensity whenever the pace slowed, as in the soprano’s “Lamento” entry and the “Tirsi” midsection. Both achieved near-stasis in the languid, virtually consonantless delivery of soprano Montserrat Figueras, the possessor, however, of a voice of striking timbral beauty and intonational purity.

These scholarly artists from Barcelona tend to make music too somberly to suit their material or Savall’s expansive, polished-to-a-fault arrangements. That they could perform with spirit was shown most tellingly in “Tau Garco, la Durundena,” a quasi-comic ode to the birth of Jesus and the power of music, by Bartomeu Carceres, whose dates were helpfully given as “(?-?).”

And there lay another of the presentation’s shortcomings: the absence of printed information on the often unfamiliar composers. And, while vocal texts and translations were provided, the house lights remained down, making the lyrics impossible to follow.

Gripes aplenty from this end, accompanied by a profound sense of imminent loss: With the Ambassador closing, this may have been the final event in our area’s most enterprising early music series.