Before it was supplanted by the keyboard and the violin early in the 17th century, the lute was the touring virtuoso's instrument of choice, and the English composer John Dowland was probably its greatest player. Contemporary accounts suggest as much, as does the varied body of lute music he left behind, most of it vastly more colorful and inventive than that of his contemporaries anywhere in Europe. His Fantasies - essentially, written-down improvisations - are richly contrapuntal and full of captivating harmonic twists.
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Once upon a time, when the world was much quieter, the lute was the premier, princely instrumental voice -- intimate, complex and expressive, ideal for accompanying songs and dances or for playing solo. Not long after Bach and Vivaldi's day, though, the lute was overwhelmed by the noise of incipient modernity.
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A de rares et très heureuses occasions, un concert peut révéler le rapport fusionnel existant entre le compositeur et son interprète. Le récital qui a ouvert vendredi à Genève le festival Luths et Théorbes en a été une. Il est 20 h 30 lorsque, dans le dépouillement extrême de l'Eglise luthérienne, fait son apparition la figure filiforme et élégante du luthiste d'exception qu'est Hopkinson Smith...
Le Temps, Geneva
Hopkinson Smith "Pierre Attaingnant": The lute is an instrument of fragile beauty. I can’t see anyone plugging in a lute and rocking out. But that’s OK by me. Hopkinson Smith plays his lute ...
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[...]Smith is a master, and there is probably no one alive who can surpass the sheer splendor of what this man can do with the most often neglected of string instruments. His lute articulation is exquisite, his rhythmic control is as impressive as it is natural. Smith is also an intense, decidedly personal interpreter capable of bringing out the mystical depths of Marais and la Colombe as well as the fiendishly intricate details of this sometimes dangerously precious music. Here is the complexity of Bach peppered with more than a dose of Latin sweetness. [...]
by Octavio Roca (The Miami Herald)
Musical styles and tastes come and go. Individual composers and entire genres swing in and out of fashion, but the performance of Early Music — think pre-Bach — lay quite dormant for three centuries or more. Yes, there were a few — very few — practitioners of these styles who kept the ideas alive during the Baroque through the Impressionist periods, but only since the mid-1970s or so have we had a renaissance of Renaissance music! The end of the twentieth century saw (and heard!) a revival and the genuine interest in trying to replicate the authentic sounds and gestures that brought light to the world as it emerged from the dark ages.
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This is essentially small, intimate music, so perhaps it is best not to make too much of it. Still, there is something seductive about these little lute pieces by Pierre Attaingnant (1494-1552), a contemporary of Rabelais who obviously...
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Classique. Le plus célèbre luthiste au monde s 'attaque à la musique française du XVIe siècle. Hopkinson Smith, à qui l 'on doit un sublime disque onsacré aux...
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Bien sûr aucune des pièces de ce superbe enregistrement n'est de Pierre Attaignant (c. 1494-1551/2). Ce courageux entrepreneur établi dès 1525 à Paris dans le quartier des écoles, qui finit, à force d'énergie et de talent, par devenir « libraire et imprimeur du Roy en musique » en 1538, a cependant mérité de figurer comme l'auteur des pages choisies par le luthiste américain Hopkinson Smith parmi la centaine de pièces du genre qu'il édita, et ce dès 1507.
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Bach ayant fait lui-même de nombreux arrangements, aussi bien de sa propre musique que de celle d'autres compositeurs, l'idée de faire une transcription pour luth baroque seul des six Sonates et Partitas pour violon solo est une prémisse plus qu'acceptable.
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Arguably, nothing by Bach is fairer game for transcription than the six 'Solos for violin without accompanying bass'. He himself transcribed one for lute, and is reported to have played them on the keyboard, filling in the implied harmony of the violin line. From one he created an organ concerto; his eldest son made keyboard works of two more.
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Hopkinson Smith makes such a good case for Bach's Sonatas and Partitas on the lute that his recording is arguably the best you can buy of these works - on any instrument
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Sylvius Leopold Weiss probably did not worry much about posterity; few 18th-century musicians did. And posterity duly ignored Weiss, partly because there was nothing suitable on which to play his music. It was tailored for the Baroque lute, a sonorous but difficult instrument that largely disappeared within a generation of his death.
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On attendait avec impatience cette intégrale des Sonates et Partitas par Hopkinson Smith. Transcription complète de l'œuvre pour violon seul, elle marque L'aboutissement d'une profonde familiarité avec l'oeuvre de Bach dont Hopkinson Smith gravait il y a vingt ans l'intégrale des pièces pour le luth. Elle marque aussi l'apogée d'un art sans équivalent.
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Hopkinson Smith plays the lute like it never went out of style. His virtuosity goes beyond physical facility to realize a rare metaphysical poetry, and in the process he brings these age-old inventions to life. Anyone thinking the preceding claim verges on the hyperbolic should audition Smith's latest issue, an Astrée album of Partitas by the great Baroque lutenist/composer Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1686-1750).
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