The Sublime Porte: Voices of Istanbul 1430-1750

The Sublime Porte is another concept album by Jordi Savall, issued just prior to Mare Nostrum, making use of much of the same ensemble, including the late Montserrat Figueras. The album's name is derived from the gate in Istanbul's Topkapi Palace, where the Sultan received foreign ambassadors. Later the name came to refer to the city's position as gateway between Europe and Asia.

In European early music practice Savall was one of the first to move away from a strict academic interpretation of notes, imagining how performance practices really would have sounded in early times, taking into consideration that music, however intellectually conceived, was always intended to move or to please. Savall and his ensemble showed modern audiences how spirited and how daring the music must have appeared at times, carrying the result far away from a museum reconstruction. Compared to Savall's earlier Istanbul album, The Sublime Porte shows Savall and his musicians really playing with all the musical elements that must have clashed and merged in this city, which was always a cultural crossroads.

Savall regularly recycles music, reinterpreting pieces he has performed before. For instance the Sephardic song ‘El Rey que Tanto Madruga’ (The King who Woke Up Early), originally from Muslim Spain, is a piece that has accompanied Savall and Figueras from their earliest recordings and has been presented by them in versions that can be traced back from Morocco to 16th century Smyrna. Perhaps the fact that the version on this album is instrumental is a silent tribute to the late Figueras.