Spanish Baroque at Jordan Hall

As part of the Boston Early Music Festival, Jordi Savall and his ensemble joined with the Tembembe ensemble to perform a feast of early Hispanic music on a variety of period instruments. Despite the logistic flaws (more on that below), it was received with thunderous applause. Mr Savall, of course, is one of the great names in early music. A gambist, he has been performing widely since the 1970's with his group Hespérion XXI. Mr. Savall played a treble viol built in Venice around 1500 and a bass viol built in 1697. His ensemble played a variety of percussion instruments, guitars, theorbo and vihuela. Joining them was the Tembembe Ensamble from Mexico, all teachers at the National University, playing a variety of guitars, violin, and maracas and singing. The first half of the concert included four lengthy pieces from the 16th and 17th centuries, and after intermission began with some traditional Scottish pieces transcribed from bagpipe to viol. They then returned to their Spanish roots, and even favored the appreciative audience with an encore. The playing was sublime, and the few vocal pieces featured Tembembe members with superb tenor voices. The only fly in the ointment was the amateurish logistics. I dropped my wife off 30 minutes before concert time, with everyone milling about in the street and returned about 15 minutes later to find the doors just opened and the audience sent in a conga line down and back a long corridor to be checked slowly in by two ticket checkers. After intermission, Mr Savall made a number of remarks about the instruments and introduced the players, but even though we were in the 11th row dead center, I could barely hear half of what he said. Surely a microphone could have been made available! Jordan hall was almost 100% filled. If you plan to go next year, get your tickets early!