This week brings part 2 of an interview with Jordi Savall, director of Hesperion 21, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, and Le Concert des Nations. On one of his most recent CDs, Du Temps et de L’Instant, or "Moments in Time", he was joined by members of his family, all highly acclaimed musicians in their own right: singer Montserrat Figueras, harpist and singer Arianna Savall, and lutenist and singer Ferran Savall, along with percussionist Pedro Estevan.

He describes this recording as being a program that builds bridges, in this case between East and West and between "classical" and "popular" styles, but also between generations of performers.  In our interview he explained the difficultly of producing a professional recording with members of your family of different generations, but in the end it became "something special" in that the family had rehearsed the program together for two years before recording the album.

One of Hesperion 21’s most recent CDs is called “Orient Occident.” It’s a combination of Turkish, medieval European, and traditional middle Eastern music, played in a spirit of celebrating musical diversity and community in a time of great strife and conflict, and quote “a wish to share musical experience with musicians of other cultures and religions.” It’s also another example of an ongoing and very strong aspect of Hesperion’s music, and that is the mingling of music from written traditions with music from various oral traditions.

Music of Luigi Boccherini is played by Le Concert des Nations and directed by Jordi Savall, on a CD entitled “Luigi Boccherini: Fandango, Sinfonie et la Musica Notturna di Madrid.”

Our new release segment this week features a beautiful new recording on the ECM label of the complete violin Sonatas and partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach, played on baroque violin by John Holloway.