"Peiwoh" – Arianna Savall (vocal, triple harp, gothic harp, celtic harp)/ Petter Johansen (vocal)/ Ferran Savall (vocal and theorb)/ Javier Mas (12-string guitar and lute)/ Mario Mas (guitar)/ Bjørn Kjellemyr (double bass)/ Dimitri Psonis (santur, bouzuki)/ and Pedro Estevan and David Mayoral (percussions) – Alia Vox 9869 [Distr. by Harmonia mundi] *****:
In Los Angeles you know that someone’s fallen in love when they take you for a ride and gush over something they’ve just heard. She hit a button and this voice came forth from a big system in her Mini Cooper. It trembled for just a moment and then proceeded to pour forth with genre bending (it’s officially tagged “world”) elasticity.
I quickly downloaded it myself. It’s called “Peiwoh” and it features the Spanish harpist and soprano Arianna Savall in a musical fantasy about a prince and the power of his harp. It is so totally beautiful and so bursting with authentic emotion that you have no choice but to submit, and submit totally. Unless you’re the one driving the car, perhaps.
It’s like listening to a stream of melody derived entirely from the fabric of music, poetry and language she has grown up with and explored. It must be like the adventure her father Jordi took when he was young: experiencing musical prayers to God in search of faith over a period of more than 1,000 years.
I can only imagine what those who have worked with Arianna over the years must think of where she is going with her music. She is so abundantly awash in gentle echoes from the past which sweep up onto the beach of her personality and physical resources. It’s a hair-trigger away from becoming elevator music (in the good sense, of course), but she’ll handle that in her own way, I’m sure.
The sound is out of this world, literally, for AliaVox has captured something immediate and real which is like being in a 3D stone chamber, sometimes the bedroom of a castle, sometimes a dungeon. This is, in fact, an ideal recording for evaluating your system: the soprano voice is always a difficult test, especially at high volumes, and the various plucked and beaten instruments that accompany her, can make a great system a mind-blowing delight.
Believe me, once you get your ears around “Peiwoh” (the name is fragrant with courtly love and music’s soothing power), the chick or the guy in the Mini should just fall into your lap.
– Laurence Vittes
