Was there a Bolivian Bach? It's possible, though unlikely that we will ever know their name. When Jesuit missionaries were evicted from Latin America in the late 18th century, they left behind a store of thousands of musical manuscripts, many of them anonymous. This time-capsule has only recently been recovered by scholars and made known through the formation of the Arakaendar Bolivia Choir.

Founded by Florilegium director Ashley Solomon, who auditioned local singers in the changing room of an Amazonian swimming pool, the Arakaendars have developed in little over five years into one of the most remarkable choirs in the world. A sequence of sacred works presented in association with the University of York Chamber Choir produced sophisticated, polyphonic sounds that might have been heard in any Catholic European country towards the latter part of the 17th century – until the Arakaendars cut loose with a robust dialogue evoking a comic collision between conquistadors and natives at the birth of Jesus.

The great Catalan viol-player Jordi Savall has spent four decades pursuing the cultural link between the Iberian peninsula and the new world, and was recognised this year with the York Early Music Festival Lifetime Achievement award. Savall's ensemble, Hesperion XXI, presented a characteristically eclectic evening that demonstrated how the European tradition of the folia – or repetitive bass line – gained an explosive new life as the Mexican fandango and the thrilling improvisation of the Canario, a form of mid-18th-century Canary Island jazz condemned at the time as "barbaric and immoral". Yet the most poignant moment was a sequence of solo viol meditations performed in memory of Savall's wife and musical soulmate, Montserrat Figueras. It culminated in a hushed, pizzicato rendition of a Bach bourrée that brimmed with sadness between every note.