Jordi Savall’s recording of the instrumental (original) version of Haydn’s Seven Last Words of the Savior on the Cross has been the best around since it was first released in 1991. Not that there’s been much competition! This fascinating, impressive work, which consists of a slow introduction, seven further slow movements, and a final instrumental “earthquake”, shows just how far Haydn took orchestral music in the 18th century. This is, first and foremost, “Romantic” music in the best sense of the term: a work of such richness and melodic abundance that its alternately intimate, painful, even eccentric expressiveness creates its own form. There isn’t a dull moment anywhere–not in Haydn’s music, and not in this performance. Le Concert des Nations plays its collective heart out for Savall, and the result is achingly beautiful.
Originally each of the seven “sonatas” was preceded by a full-length sermon on the “word” (actually a phrase) that it purports to illustrate. Fortunately, we are spared the sermons, but Savall has included brief Latin recitations of the appropriate Gospel passages containing the relevant “words”, and they add greatly to the effect of the whole. This is real music for meditation; it’s not wallpaper, and not just because Savall and his orchestra raise the roof with the final “earthquake”. Haydn knew his audience would be listening very carefully to see if he wrote up to the level of his subject matter, and he worked very hard to make the whole thing musically interesting, varying the keys, rhythms, tempos (within reason), and orchestration of each movement. One measure of his success can be judged from the many versions of the music (from piano solo to string quartet to full oratorio) that survive. And while the oratorio contains wonderful things (including the incredible solo wind-band introduction to Part Two), if I had to chose just one version of the work, it would be this original setting for orchestra, just as Savall’s would be its performance.
