MADRID / Delirivm Musica: Charpentier with a Spanish accent
Madrid. Pontifical Basilica of San Miguel. 19-III-2021. FIAS. Delirivm Music. Director and flute: Juan Portilla. Obras by Charpentier.
It is paradoxical that, being Jordi Savall a consummate and highly recognized specialist in French Baroque, his example has not been set in Spain. It is true that this music is extraordinarily idiomatic and that very few, Gauls on the sidelines, do it properly. But the respect it continues to command outside France itself is surprising. And very especially, in our country, where until a few years ago it was little less than forbidden territory. Luckily, ensembles like La Bellemont, Impetus or La Reverencia have dared to sink their teeth into it, and they have done it really well, although always in that small format to which our specialists in early music seem to be permanently doomed. Last Friday at FIAS was a blessed exception, because finally a Spanish group, Delirivm Musica, shed any complex and faced without hesitation one of the great banners of the French Baroque: Marc-Antoine Charpentier. And with an organic of considerable dimensions, as it has to be.
Two violins, two flutes, two violas da gamba, a violone, an archlute, a harpsichord and an organ, as well as five female and four female voices. I summarize it like this, so as not to have to resort to the terminology, not always understandable, of the French Baroque, where violins are above The viola countern, the violas da gamba are cut The violin fifth, and the singers are not sopranos, alto, tenor or bass, but above, low above, high against, cut The low-rise, and so on. In total, nineteen musicians in a crowded Church of San Miguel, and with another almost a couple of hundred people who were left without being able to access the temple because the capacity had been completed.
The expectation was fully justified because the program included the De profundis H. 189 and the Magnificat 3 voices on an obligatory bass H. 73 de Charpentier, as well as two more instrumental works by this composer, the For an H. 508 repository (instrumental, but with plain singing passages) and the Eight Sonata H. 548. All absolutely French, although the cornerstone of the program, the De ProfundisWe find a strong Spanish link, since it was composed for the funerals of Louis XIV’s wife, the queen consort María Teresa of Austria, daughter of Felipe IV.
What an unfortunate marriage! On her deathbed, María Teresa revealed that she had only been happy one day since she set foot in France and never returned to Spain (it is assumed that that day was the day of the birth of her first-born, the Great Dolphin, the only one of her six offspring that lived to more than five years). But, in addition, his destiny was forged between black omens: the marriage with Louis XIV was one of the appendices of the Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed on the Island of the Pheasants, where the eternal Diego de Velázquez had come in his capacity of royal lodger and where the Sevillian painter contracted a fever as a result of which he died a few weeks later, already in Madrid.
De Profundis It is probably one of the most important sacred works of the entire second half of the seventeenth century, in which Charpentier displays his inexhaustible inventiveness, without depriving himself of certain Italian touches, those of which he imbued himself during his stay in Rome. listening to the music of Giacomo Carissimi or Domenico Mazzocchi. The interpretation of this funerary piece by Delirivm Musica was close to outstanding, with a splendid work by the effective vocals, perfect connoisseurs not only of the style, but also of the French touch of Latin.
The splendid level was not repeated in the other three works of the program, perhaps because during the rehearsals Juan Portilla, director of the group, placed more emphasis on the De Profundis, given its complexity. But this does not mean that the interpretation of the Magnificat and of the two instrumental pieces it will leave something to be desired, far from it. It is, after all, a matter of work. If they have the time to prepare music that is so unfamiliar to them, the new batch of Spanish musicians have shown that they are capable of doing it as well as others. The problem is that they almost never have, for budgetary reasons, that time. This does not lead to the start of this review: perhaps French Baroque is not done here because there is the necessary financial means, but not because talent is scarce, far from it.
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