Palace Concerts

Artists

Le Concert des Nations

Jordi Savall, conductor

Programme

The Elements and the Furies

Jean-Féry Rebel (1666-1747)

Les Éléments (1737)

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

Aquatic Music: Suite I in F major, HWV 348 (1717)

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787)

Don Juan. Convitato di Pietra (1761

Concert with no interval

Passion and the Elements

With his Concert des Nations, Jordi Savall undertakes a program that mixes descriptive elements with the most striking colours, as well as with passion and dance. We are in the Age of Enlightenment, so the suite of The Elements by Rebel does not come from any divine being, but from the primal chaos in one of the most amazing and extravagant baroque pages of the entire repertoire. The character of the French dance suite dominates both Rebel’s work and Handel’s music written for a famous journey by George I of England on the Thames. Passion and dance also merge in Gluck’s Don Juan, a ballet premiered in Vienna in 1761 together with the librettist Calzabigi and the choreographer Angiolini, the same ones who a year later would shake up the world of opera with their proverbial Orpheus ed Euridice.