Lux Femina

Alqhai, Fahmi, Figueras, Montserrat, Lawrence-King, Andrew, Lislevand, Rolf, Rizzo, Carlo, Savall, Arianna, Savall, Jordi

AVSA 9847

Montserrat Figueras has been one of the outstanding figures in the early music movement since the last decades of the last century. Together with her husband Jordi Savall, she founded the ensembles Hespèrion XX (now Hespèrion XXI), Capella Reial de Catalunya and Le Concert des Nations, with which the artist couple performed and recorded music from the High Middle Ages to the 18th century. • In recent years the artistic involvement of the children Arianna and Ferran Savall has gained importance. Montserrat Figueras and her family also focused on the manifold roots of art music in the traditions of Arab and Jewish culture. The present CD, which is a tribute to women, is also to be seen in this context, and not only during the 700 years from which the music of this recording originates. Montserrat Figueras has designed her portrait of the woman like a kaleidoscope in which the colored glass fragments arrange themselves into a new picture with each rotation. Thus different aspects of the theme "woman" emerge: the light of the woman, the woman of antiquity, the new woman (who in the Middle Ages as troubadora was artistically an equal partner to the troubadors), the woman of courtly love, the mystical woman, the beloved woman, the woman as mother and the complaining woman. • The music to these pictures of women reflects in its diversity the artistic diversity of Montserrat Figueras: From the Sibylline songs of the 10th century to the Arabic and Sephardic heritage, the journey leads to the songs of the medieval troubadours and continues impressively through Villancico's of the Spanish golden age in the 16th century to Basque and Andalusian folk tradition.

SACD x 1

Alia Vox

10.04.2006

7619986398471