Hespèrion XXI, Savall, QEH review - an evening filled with laughter and light

For the first encore of the evening, it was not just the audience but the whole ensemble of Hespèrion XXI that was mesmerised as its leader, Jordi Savall, executed a fiendishly rapid sequence of notes that sent the rosin from his bow rising up like smoke.

At the age of 83, one of the world’s most influential viol players continues to demonstrate that his genius for teasing out every nuance of baroque allows him to soar through the music as freely as a bird.

This joyful, sharply inventive concert with his group was titled Baroque Revolution, reflecting the innovative spirit of the 16th and 17th century composers it featured from Europe and South America. The programme began with an elegant amuse bouche from Vincenzo Ruffo, an Italian priest and choirmaster who experimented with different forms of music and notation.

When Savall (pictured below by David Ignaszewski) walked on with the other members of Hespèrion XXI, he was leaning on a crutch, but the moment he started playing his treble viol he seemed physically liberated. Ruffo – according to the programme – was the first composer to write capricci (pieces of fast, playful, often virtuosic music), and here we heard the range of what such music could express in "La gamba", "La disperata" and "La piva" from Capricci in musica a tre voci.

The first movement was filled with light and élan as Savall duetted with Xavier Puertas on the violone [ancestor of the double bass], accompanied by the patter of David Mayoral on the tambourine. "La disperata" (The desperate) was – appropriately for its name, full of yearning and lamentation, its harmonies as pungently bitter as rosemary. Then "La piva" – inspired by peasant dances accompanied by bagpipes – took us into a more joyful realm again, with Andrew Lawrence-King on the arpa doppia (an Italian double-strung harp])introducing a sense of translucence and sunlight.

Next we were swept into the Sinfonia from Emilio de’ Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo – the first drama set entirely to music. This stately work introduced new textures into the programme as it was led by the arpa doppia and Xavier Diaz-Latorre on the theorbo. The stateliness faded away and a sense of effervescence prevailed as the Sinfonia was succeeded by Cavalieri’s "Ballo del Granduca" from La Pellegrina. Diaz-Latorre replaced his theorbo with a more jaunty guitar, while the sense of vitality was heightened by vigorous dotted rhythms from the arpa doppia and the tambourine.

Tobias Hume was a soldier/composer inclined to pranks: one of his compositions demanded that two players perform on the same viol, with the smaller player sitting on the lap of the larger. Happily – or sadly according to your perspective – that did not feature in the programme: instead we had the stunningly beautiful The Lady Cane’s delight – almaine, which brought a mournful, lyrical tone to proceedings, before the exhilarating complexity of the interweaving runs in Orlando Gibbons’ Fantasia a three, no 12. Following this the little-known Variations on a ground (1610, Anonymous) began like exquisite embroidery in sound. This evolved into an energising cascade of notes from Savall which swiftly became a jaw-dropping display of technical fireworks.

Overall the programme featured 18 items, plus two encores, so there’s no room in this review to analyse each element. One unifying aspect of this delightfully disparate evening was the joy of observing the relationship between the players, which felt more akin to the dynamics of a jazz band than a classical ensemble. As the percussionist, Puertas was given particularly free rein, not least in William Brade’s lilting Scottish Dance, where his boisterous introduction of the “boing boing boings” of a Jewish harp added a distinctive comedy to proceedings. Later, Kapsberger’s Variations sur La Folia was a gorgeous demonstration of theorbo player Diaz-Latorre’s virtuosity.

Yet while it was very much an ensemble, it was also indisputably Savall’s evening – not because of any sense of ego, but because of the uncompromising intensity of his relationship with the music. A particularly special moment was when he told the audience, in slightly halting English, that he had made his debut in the Queen Elizabeth Hall 54 years ago. The audience's whoops and applause were testament to everything he has achieved more than half a century later. Playing on the treble viol throughout the concert, he took us through emotions that ranged from the velvety grief of the opening of Biagio Marini’s Passacaglia a four, Op. 22 to the dizzying ecstasy of the Anonymous Folias criollas.

For the second encore he even managed to imitate a – slightly eccentric – canary on his viol, with the ensemble members watching him in amused disbelief before they happily joined in. It was a testament as much to their enduring love and respect for him as for their impressive versatility, and a suitably teasing end to an evening full of laughter and light.

• Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI will next be playing at L'Opéra, Bordeaux on June 17
• More classical music reviews on theartsdesk