Customer Reviews

L'Oeuvre de Luth

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I just bought this cd from my local cd store, and i was blown away! The music is just great. The sound of the recording is perfect, and the way this guy plays.... The pieces are a bit slower than i was used to in the gould, williams or bream recordings, but the tempo fits great, the record has a calm feel to it that serves very well the kind of spiritual nature of bach's music, and it gives time to every voice and sound to be perceived and enjoyed. But don't get it wrong, the interpreter gives us quite a bit of musical and emotional range here... I could go on and on, but let me just say that if it only were for the Praeludium Fugue und Allegro BWV998 this set would be worth the price... If you like bach on guitar i think you sould have this one to, no doubt!

Smith is a wonderful musician and his interpretations are impeccable. But with the exception of the 2nd lute suite BWV997 which opens the 2nd disk, there is just no bass in the recording and even the lower midrange is effaced. So the fat plucked bass sonority that says "baroque lute" is missing and the bass lines and lower midrange voicings are lost. A shame.

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.

I throughly enjoyed these versions of Bach's Lute suites. They seem more natural on Lute. If you want a guitar version, check out Sharon Ibsen's recording, Bach: Complete Lute Suites. I have both. I find the Hopkins Smith recording are a bit more sedate, but also more relaxing.