Mediterranean and Nordic Christmas music with Arianna Savall and her Baroque ensemble Hirundo MarisSince the founding of their ensemble in 2009, Hirundo Maris, the Catalan harpist and singer Arianna Savall, and the Norwegian tenor and violist Petter Udland Johansen have committed themselves to music from the Middle Ages up to the Baroque period. And a special emphasis has been Mediterranean and Nordic music. For their current album, “Silent Night – Early Christmas Music and Carols” both musicians and ensemble conductors have chosen traditional Christmas songs from the north and south. And in doing so, invite you along on a journey of sound into the magical world of centuries-old winter, Advent, and Christmas music.The German song “Silent Night” is laid out on the program alongside the Norwegian Christmas song “Mitt hjerte alltid vanker”, the Provençal “Ô nuit brillante” and the Catalonish, “El cant dels ocells”, which the legendary early music pioneer Jordi Savall, Arianna Savalls famous father, orchestrated for the recording.“Every country has its own Christmas traditions and its own treasure trove of Christmas songs” says the musician from the Hirundo Maris ensemble (the ensemble name is the Latin term for “sea swallow”). “Some of them, like “Silent Night” are known throughout the world and are translated in numerous languages, but many of these songs have remained hidden in their home countries like a national treasure. Hirundo Maris now showcases many such musical treasures in imaginative compositions that fuse the old with the present day.The expressive voices of Arianna Savall and Petter Udland Johansen give rise to an atmospheric dialogue with multifaceted instrumental parts. Such sounds emanate from cheerful bagpipes, an expertly played Cornetto, the poetic slide guitar “Dobro” and violins, flutes, harps and percussion. “Our music is based on four important elements: early music, folk music, our own composition, and improvisation. We all play different instruments, but the voices of Arianna and Petter are the main focus of our group.”The musicians of Hirundo Maris all come from many European countries: Norway, England, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Catalonia. And accordingly, the recording of beautiful melodies has become a kind of sound mirror reflecting the diverse musical traditions of European Christmas celebrations. “The singing of heavenly Christmas music brings everyone peace and hope” says Arianna Savall. “Singing is one of the best opportunities to bring people together. It is very spiritual. We cannot touch it, but we all feel it deep in our hearts.”TRACKLIST1.     The Holly and the Ivy & El Noi de la Mare 04:24(El noi de la mare) - trad, English/Catalan , arr. Arianna Savall /  Petter Udland Johansen2.     El Desembre Congelat 05:29trad. Catalan, arr. Arianna Savall / Petter Udland Johansen3.     ¡Ay, que me abraso! 04:43Juan García de Zéspedes, (17th century, Mexico) arr. Arianna Savall / Petter Udland Johansen4.     Mitt hjerte alltid vanker 05:21trad. Norwegen, arr. Arianna Savall / Petter Udland Johansen5.     Es ist ein Ros‘ entsprungen 03:27Michael Praetorius (1571 -1621), arr. Arianna Savall6.     Wexford Carol 07:44trad, Irland, arr. Arianna Savall / Petter Udland Johansen7.     Ô nuit brillante 07:17trad Noël Provençal arr. Joseph Bovet / Arianna Savall / Petter Udland Johansen8.     El cant dels ocells 06:08trad. Catalan, arr. Jordi Savall9.     Kling no, klokka 02:39trad. Norwegen10.   La salve 06:50Arianna Savall (1972 )11.   Rug Muire mac do Dhia 04:33(Mary bore a son to God) - trad. Ireland 18th century, arr. Arianna Savall12.   Stille Nacht 03:55​​​​​​​Franz Xaver Gruber (1787 - 1863) / Joseph Mohr 1792 - 1848), arr. Arianna Savall / Petter Udland Johansen

This third album of Arianna Savall and Petter Udland Johansen with their ensemble Hirundo Maris on Carpe Diem Records is a musical journey along coasts and oceans, an ode to seafarers and travelers from ancient and modern times, to their lives, hopes and dreams. The windrose points into all cardinal points, encompassing all different cultures and places on earth in it's movement. At the same time, it can be a symbol for the inner travels of the human soul which may aim into all different directions and places throughout life. In this sense, the songs on this album connect inner and outer journeying through music and poetry, just as countries and people are connected through oceans, currents, and winds.

The new album by Arianna Savall, Petter Udland Johansen and their ensemble Hirundo Maris, following last years’ Hildegard of Bingen - recording, is a musical journey of Amor, the love, through Europe and beyond, and through different ages and cultures. Assembled on this album are traditional songs, songs from Renaissance sources as well as new compositions by Arianna Savall and, finally, the famous “Gracias a la vida” by Chilenian singer and political activist Violeta Parra.

The six musicians of Hirundo Maris combine all these diverse musical sources of their music into a time- and weightless dance through time and space. In the end, it is not clear anymore where the borders and differences between them are, and it is not even important anymore: Love as the universal uniting force is being applied here in a most practical way, and made comprehensible and very real to the attentive listener.

Hirundo Maris:

Arianna Savall – soprano, baroque triple harp
Petter Udland Johansen – tenor, hardingfele, cittern
Michal Nagy – guitar, voice
Sveinung Lilleheier – guitar, dobro, voice
Miquel Angel Cordero – colascione, double base, voice
David Mayoral – percussion, voice

One of the most prominent women in medieval Europe, Hildegard of Bingen's political, spiritual, and artistic legacy has remained unique to this day. For good reason, she is still known to a wide public almost a thousand years after her death. The interest in Hildegard gained momentum after Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed her a Doctor of the Church. It is therefore to be welcomed that a young generation of musicians is exploring her works. Thanks to the Sequentia ensemble, Hildegard’s entrancing music has made it into the pop music charts since 1980. Initially, the aim was mainly to unveil the treasure of Hildegard’s compositions. As time has passed, not only has a great deal of knowledge about early music reading and performance practice been acquired, but also young musicians nowadays feel much more relaxed about developing their own views and interpretations of masterpieces, thus making valuable contributions from both a philological and musical standpoint.

This is precisely what we should expect when Arianna Savall, Petter Udland Johansen and their Hirundo Maris ensemble delve into Hildegard’s music. Vox Cosmica, the name of the CD, says it all, for Hildegard was convinced that the cosmos was a single sonorous whole held together by the harmony and love of a creator. His holy principles are transformed by Hildegard into sounds. Caritas and Sapientia are not sung,: instead, they raise their voices themselves. What better expression of those principles than Arianna Savall’s clear, warm, sensual and unpretentious soprano voice?

Her counterpart is is Petter Udland Johansen’s characterful tenor. Vox Cosmica goes beyond Hildegard of Bingen’s feminine spirituality to create a male antipode in Peter Abelard’s Laments of David. In both his tragic love for his pupil Héloise and his theology based on reason, Abelard is an antipode, if not the antipode of Hildegard: not only in his life and teachings, but also in the few intensely personal compositions that have survived. Whereas Hildegard refers to the great whole and the ideal, Abelard focuses on the specific and the individual. Hildegard knows no pain, while Abelard sings of it alone – and Petter Udland Johansen certainly brings that pain to its most heartfelt expression.

The musicians – Hirundo Maris, David Mayoral, Anke and Andreas Spindler – move effortlessly and knowledgeably through the complex manuscripts of both the medieval abbess and the love-stricken theologian. Yet they do not forget their own origins or our musical present. They join together Hildegard’s main chants to create touching units, contrasting them with Abelard, and threading it all together with musical meditations by Petter Udland Johansen. These meditations are intensely moving, shifting the timeframes almost imperceptibly from medieval music to the present, neither detaching from Hildegard’s material in a modernistic manner nor ingratiating in a cosy, stereotypical way to produce an esoteric feel-good atmosphere. Thus, rather than providing a contrast to medieval sounds, present-day music is allowed to flow logically from the latter. The aim is nothing less than a new unity of past and present, which in fact is timelessness. In this way, Hildegard’s and Abelard’s messages easily cross space and time, being felt in a very direct, emotionally authentic way. As to us, we can ask ourselves what remains foreign and what touches us.

Thomas Höft

In Honor of Rudolf Kolisch (1896-1978) is Music & Arts' six-disc tribute to a key figure in twentieth century music whose name is invoked in a number of historic contexts, yet whose actual recorded work remains almost unknown. Rudolf Kolisch was the leader of the Kolisch String Quartet, the "house band" at Arnold Schoenberg's ISCM conferences in the 1920s and a group that formed the first line of defense in the avant-garde musical movements in Europe before the rise of Nazi Germany. As the Kolisch also recorded a fair amount of standard quartet literature, this set is limited mainly to this and Kolisch's other groups' recordings of the Second Vienna School and Bart k, although the Kolisch Quartet recording of the Schubert Octet in F, performed with additional guest players, from the Library of Congress in 1940 is included as a bonus. The program opens with an extraordinary and audacious series of private recordings, made on a United Artists soundstage in Hollywood under the aegis of Alfred Newman, of all four of Schoenberg's string quartets dating from late 1936 and early 1937. The Fourth Quartet hadn't even premiered yet - this would occur the day after recording, on January 8, 1937, at UCLA. from this same session are included some of Schoenberg's spoken comments, in which he offers thanks to Newman and United Artists, and even addresses the "friends" of his music that belong to the future, presumably not yet born. These recordings have been issued a number of times, despite their "p-r-r-rivate" (pace Schoenberg) provenance, and unfortunately little can be done to rescue them from their noisy and somewhat dim audio perspective. They have never been dealt with, in a sonic sense, with more proficiency than here. From an interpretive standpoint, this Kolisch performance of the String Quartet No. 1 in D minor remains one of the best made, simply because the group has a thorough understanding of the Viennese milieu in which the quartet was conceived and does not try to make it sound more "modern" than it is. from there we jump ahead to 1950 and the Pro Arte Quartet of the University of Wisconsin, a pre-existing group that Kolisch took over in 1945 and retrofitted for performances of contemporary quartet literature. We get a second shot at the Third Schoenberg quartet with this group, and the performance is tighter and even more intense than that with the Kolisch Quartet, not to mention heard in excellent mono sound taken from a Dial LP. for some reason the sonic perspective is a little more cramped in Berg's Lyric Suite and some of the other Dials, but it is still astonishing to realize that in hearing the Berg you are listening to a performance led by the same person who premiered this now standard work at a 1927 ISCM Festival. The tempi observed here are faster than in most performances - indeed, the pace of the Allegro misterioso is downright dizzying. The three discs that follow are an embarrassment of riches: Kolisch heard in a rare context as soloist, playing the Schoenberg concerto at the University of Wisconsin, the Bart k Sonata for solo violin, and Schoenberg's Fantasy, Op. 47, with his colleague Gunnar Johansen. With the Pro Arte Quartet, further Dial recordings are heard - the Webern Opp. 5 and 9, Schoenberg's early String Quartet in D of 1897, and Bart k's Fifth Quartet Apart from the purely historical value of the recordings, and their highly variable sound quality, what is Kolisch like? In his time, all of this music was unfamiliar, and in the twenty-first century nearly all of it is familiar - in a sense some of it has reached a point of perfection that approaches fossilization. Kolisch certainly isn't looking to make his Schoenberg or Bart k warm and cozy, and he doesn't have a problem dealing with it as "difficult" music; after hearing his Bart K Sonata for solo violin, some might wonder if Kolisch is not making it a bit more diff.