Search - Sylvius Leopold Weiss :: Weiss: Sonatas for Lute, Volume 1

Lost treasure unearthed!

noeton | Pennsylvania | 11/18/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you don't want the social history or to be convinced about the merits of Weiss viz. Bach, you needn't read past the first paragraph: Barto is so very good; the recording first-rate. Rarely does a product of any type whatsoever provide this magnitude of "bang for your buck." Cannot recommend it more highly. I'm just so glad someone has at last dusted off these lovely gems and shone such a radiant light on them.



Now then...



The guitar has superceded the lute since the Viennese Classical period (as the bourgeois parlor's answer to the lute's place in the Court). But when the orchestras had grown to overblown proportions as though to reflect the decadence of the age which culminated in the astonishing catastrophe of the great struggle between Germany and America to supplant England's place as preeminent empire in the War of 1914-1945, the lute indeed seemed to have not a huge significance in the universe. Then there was the guitar renaissance of the post-war period, for which we must rightly praise Segovia (over his playing itself!), who peddled the guitar as, basically, a portable one-man mini-orchestra (yes, "man" here really means the male species: the guitar, unfortunately retains its mystique as a reproduction of the female body in finely polished lumber to be played by a man; it is of course the preferred common instrument of wooing, as though one's faculty with the strings demonstrates superior manhood). For decades the name "Weiss" was largely known only through transcriptions to that instrument of his effusively-

monickered masterpiece the "Tombeau sur la morte de M. Comte de Logy." Even amongst those in the know, Weiss yet remains overshadowed as the "Bach of the lute" - a qualification certainly containing praise but a tad backhandedly, as the very need for a qualification as such speaks for itself: this guy is NOT Bach. Well, that is certainly true. Despite that he had an astonishing plethora of children, many of whom went of to be >almost< first-rate composers themselves, their is yet only one BAAAAACH.



An old and terrible joke: put on your best Arnold Schwarzenneger voice and say, "I'll be 'back' ... and you'll be Beethoven."



Anyhoo, Weiss deserves a place of his own, yet if we can't help but place him without resort to the one master, let's do it through distinction, so to speak:



Firstly, Bach didn't actually write anything strictly for lute. He composed a few works for lautenklavier, a keyboard instrument that, rather than hammering strings like a piano, mechanically plucked them so as to approximate the sound of the lute. As written, these works are in fact not playable on the lute, since Bach saw no need to confine these compositions (most famous eg. is BWV 999) to an instrument for which he wasn't actually composing. Weiss was a thoroughgoing lutenist. Hence, there is a properness of relation between composition and instrument that experience in listening if not strict expertise can teach us to appreciate. Weiss thereby opens the door to a certain sublimnity in how his style diverges from Bach's even while it only in places (indeed, "only"!) achieves the degree of mastery for which we know Bach qua Bach.



Secondly, one can, 'pragmatically' let us say, concisely distinguish two modalities of mood with the terms "Happy Bach" and "Sad Bach." For example, French Suite No. 5 is Happy Bach and the Erbarme dich from St. Matthew's Passion is (unquestionably) Sad (Bach, like many ultra-geniuses, might have been a manic-depressive of sorts). The distinction tends to fall between pieces - mainly the chamber works and short organ pieces, but also functions often for the cantatas. While this claim is but a limited generalization, I submit that Weiss is more deft at moving from happy to sad WITHIN works. We often then get a broader range of satisfaction, if not through depth of interrogation of a theme and its possibilities for evoking every nuance of a complex emotion, as with Bach (e.g.: Violin Partita No. 2).



So, Enjoy!"

Sublime

Sor_Fingers | Boulder, CO USA | 01/21/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is the first in Robert Barto's series of recordings of the Lute Music of Weiss on Naxos. The label has chosen a wonderful lutenist to record these unbelievable works. While Barto may not be a name you hear as much, he plays this music wonderfully with great tone, sensitive musicianship, and refined technique that is comparable to great lutenists like Hopkinson Smith and Paul O'Dette. As for the actual music, you can't go wrong with Weiss. Weiss could easily be mistaken for Bach. The compositional quality of these sonatas is absolutely wonderful. While the pieces are not technically "sonatas" (as they do not employ sonata form), they are very much in the style of baroque dance suites written by Bach. This disc is absolutely excellent. Lots of great music played on the original instrument with good performance practice. See the "Add to Cart" button? Click on it."