Search - Johann Sebastian Bach :: L'Oeuvre de Luth

Exquisite Touch

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 12/02/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Hopkinson Smith plays these suites and preludes as Music first, and music for lute second. Guitar players may find his rubato excessive and object that he doesn't heed the dance forms - allemande, gavotte, gigue, etc - with the proper Terpsichorean rhythmic regularity. In fact, he doesn't. His interpretation owes more to cello antecedents than to guitar, and at times he clearly intends the music to be vocal - at least as vocal as a plucked-string instrument can be. He doesn't strike chords on his lute; he sings melody sentences with his fingers. The result is a special melancholy beauty, a pensive introverted Bach, whom I imagine playing his clavichord or lautenwerk by himself while Ana Magdalena walks the little Bachs through the garden. Occasionally a playful smile creeps across his face and he brightens his touch for a bouree in a major key.



Bach was well-acquainted with the idiomatic lute compositions of Silvius Leopold Weiss, who visited him in Leipzig in 1739. Nevertheless, most of the works indicated for lute are also indicated for keyboard - the 'lautenwerk' was a keyboard instrument - and the Suite BWV 995 on CD 1 is a transcription for lute of the solo cello Suite BWV 1011. Likewise, several of the works for lute performed on CD2 are derived from the earlier partitas for solo violin. So it's clear, I think, that Bach would have approved of Hoppy Smith's conception of these pieces as pure Music rather than concert showpieces for lute or guitar.



But the most important thing is the dusky elegance of Smith's timbre. This performance carries me away emotionally, to a place where I can only listen without thinking. I treasure that place."