A narrative of the city from 1430 to 1750 traces the interaction of Ottoman music with Greek, Sephardic and Armenian elements, allowing some religious freedom and ensuring great cultural diversity.’
Alia Vox, The Guardian’s review of Hespèrion XXI/Savall: La Sublime Porte: Voix d’Istanbul
Voix d’Istanbul released in 2011 is one of Jordi Savall’s most eloquent musical meditations on the layered soul of our city, Istanbul.
Jordi Savall
Rather than treating Istanbul as a fixed historical object, the album approaches it as a living crossroads where memory, devotion, courtly refinement, and popular expression continuously converse.
Savall and Hespèrion XXI bring together Ottoman, Sephardic, Armenian, Greek, and Sufi musical voices, allowing each tradition to retain its own timbre while revealing how deeply intertwined they have always been in Istanbul. The result is not a collage but a dialogue of voices meeting without dissolving into sameness.
Jordi Savall with his wife Montserrat Figueras who passed away only a month before the album was released
Voix d’Istanbul is less about reconstructing the past than about making audible a fragile idea of cultural memory. In an age marked by amnesia and polarization, Savall offers listening as a moral act.
The album invites us to hear Istanbul not as a singular voice but as a polyphony, one that reminds us that civilizations endure not by purity, but by the capacity to resonate with the other.
Make sure to listen to the album to pay tribute to the great master Jordi Savall and to immerse yourself in the diverse sounds of this eternal city.
