| Review by JJ December 23, 2010 (7 of 9 found this review helpful)
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The latest historical, musical fresco by Jordi Savall is this time devoted to the famous Borgia family. On three SACDs of copious content and a DVD on the creation of the project, the famous bassist opens for us the doors to a universe that is both fascinating and daunting. For, as Joan Francesc Mira recounts in the brochure accompanying the recording: “The history of more than one hundred years of the Borgia family is, without legend or myth, an adventure that can barely be imagined if it were not totally real: a family of the lower Valencia aristocracy which, in less than a half century, gave two Popes and a dozen cardinals to the Roman church, and which for many years held power in this same church. It was a family which managed to marry its children (like Father, like Son!) to members of the most important reigning families. It also became the source of power struggles in Italy and at the same time the theater of an accumulation of infamies the likes of which the Papacy and Roman Catholic Church have never know since. And finally, it closed the incredible circle by producing a great saint, general of the Company of Jesus in the middle of the Counter-Reformation. An audacious novelist’s fantasy could not have imagined a story like that.” Accompanied by Montserrat Figueras, Lior Elmaleh, Driss El Maloumi, Pascal Bertin, Lluis Vilamajo, Marc Mauillon, Furio Zanasi and Daniele Carnovich, Jordi Savall once again finds the narrative magic of his Don Quichotte in a musical discourse that includes such famous figures Josquin des Prez or Cristobal de Morales. Yet again, one can only laud a unique historical, intellectual and musical undertaking. Inspired throughout, as heard here it is of undeniable human verity.
Jean-Jacques Millo
Translation Lawrence Schulman
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| Review by Araner January 5, 2011 (6 of 7 found this review helpful)
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| A new comprehensive project of Savall, historical portrait of the Borgia family time, and during four centuries, motivated by the 500th anniversary of Saint Francesco Borgia. Favorite Savall's a combination of Arabic, Jewish and Christian music themes, music tracks reconstructed from the archives, top music and performing administration, high-tech recording submitted with precision instruments and voices, use of space. Many music (3 multichannel SACD) + bonus DVD documentary about the whole project. An exquisite book with many interesting texts on the theme. These are all superlatives. Only one dramaturgical question: 3 or 10 SACD can not cover a period of several centuries. For continuous listening seems to be a very diverse set of songs and discontinuous, a variety of motifs, but actually fragmented. Still, it is musically, technically and thematically on the top title.
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Sonics: 
