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

WEISS
LUTE MUSIC
Jakob Lindberg
BIS CD 1524
2004 · 74:00’