This truly special recording celebrates the restoration of a sixteenth-century lute made ca. 1590 by Sixtus Rauwolf, now owned by Jakob Lindberg, and by his own reckoning the oldest extant instrument “in playable condition with its original soundboard”. What is perhaps most immediately striking about the lute itself is the depth of its bass register, and the way this seems to radiate upwards, suffusing the entire instrument. One recalls Hopkinson Smith’s recording, made thirty years ago as part of the original Reflexe series on the eighteenth-century Widhalm lute, and also featuring Weiss’s music. This new disc makes for a rewarding comparison, as the older instrument’s restoration gives it a fuller bloom, more rounded tone and a greater presence; it has such richness of tone that one readily imagines it to be two lutes in one, with agile, melodic upper courses and an incorporated ‘continuo function’, so to speak.

Unsurprisingly, the listener’s attention will initially be drawn to the instrument, but the music, one feels, could hardly have been better chosen. The suites offered here are composites, and given Weiss’s prodigious output, assembling such a programme must have constituted a project in itself, a real labour of love. The opening piece’s startling harmonic progressions are given added poignancy and vibrancy by the lute’s sheer depth of character, and set the tone for the rest of the disc. As an evocation of the lute’s magical qualities, this deserves to achieve cult status. FABRICE FITCH