Early-Music Performance Melts Away the Centuries

Hisperion XX, led by viola de gamba player Jordi Savall, is the sort of vital and engaging early-music group that seems destined to win new converts. They’re obviously committed to one of the worthier cultural causes in music, delving into period instruments and practices, but without the kind of scholarly dryness of delivery that might keep listeners at an emotional arm’s length from the music.

There are musical lessons to learn as well. In their embracing program at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Friday, the specific point of focus was on music from the time of Spain’s King Felipe II, who died 400 years ago. By the account of this program, the musical material of the vintage was varied, from sacred pieces to almost lusty folklike dances, mixed vocal and instrumental forces.

Hisperion XX is a malleable aggregate, with the instrumentation changing according to the material at hand. For this program, it was a fairly large and altogether finely honed group, with 11 instrumentalists and five vocalists, including the luminous soprano Montserrat Figueras.

In the string section, Savall was joined by three other viola de gamba players. The sound of several of these once all-but-obsolete instruments is a bewitching one, producing an airy timbre quite apart from the lushness of modern stringed instruments.

All was not restricted to the written note: Savall stretched out with fanciful variations over the somber theme on “Canto Ilano de la Inmaculada Concepcion,” and interacted in a looser, improvisational way than usual on “Danza del Hacha-Canarios,” before the elegant lament of “Si la noche haze escura.”

In all, it was an enchanting evening, of passionate and lucid musical time travel.