Liuto con forza
Bengt HAMBRÆUS (1928-2000)
Varianti per liuto solo (2000) [13:49]
Ivo NILSSON (b.1966)
Luta for theorbo (1999-2000) [9:25]
Erik PETERS (b.1970)
Pice for lute and live electronics (2010) [8:02]
Lars EKSTRÖM (b.1956)
Vision and Ashes for theorbo (1996) [12:18]
Ingvar KARKOFF (b.1958)
Four Pieces for lute (1985) [9:19]
Kent OLOFSSON (b.1962)
Chemin de Silence I-III for theorbo (2010) [9:58]
Peter Söderberg (6-course Renaissance lute, 8-course Renaissance lute, 11-course
baroque lute, Theorbo)
rec. 21-23 October 2009 and 17-18 March 2010, Studio 12, Radiohuset, Gothenburg.
DDD
PHONO SUECIA PSCD 186 [62:53] 
Has anyone written a book on the fascinating phenomenon of twentieth century
(and later) music written for ‘ancient’ instruments? If so, it has escaped
me so far, but the field is certainly a very interesting one. The lute has
had rather less ‘modern’ music written for it than the harpsichord has. There
are relatively few significant modern works for the lute family; such examples
as there are might include compositions by Mauricio Kagel, Howard Skempton,
Stephen Dodgson, Sandor Kallos and a few others. Now here is an entire CD
of newish works for the lute, all written between 1985 and 2010. Peter Söderberg
was joined by Sven Åborg on an earlier CD, The Contemporary Lute
– which contained music by Cage, Stockhausen, Reich and Ingvar Karkoff, not
all of it written specifically for the instrument.
In the days of its greatest glory, the lute was an instrument endlessly praised
by poets, almost exclusively in terms of its gentleness and sweetness of sound.
For Richard Barnfield (1584) it produced a “sweet melodious sound”; for John
Ashmore (1621) it had a “sweet warbling sound”. In a poem by Robert Lovelace,
‘Lute and Voice: A Dialogue’ (1659), the Voice implores the instrumentalist
to
Touch [his] soft Lute, and in each gentle thread,
The Lyon and the Panther Captive lead”.
The lute’s power was a matter of magic and harmony, not ‘force’. To admirers
and instrumentalists alike the notion of the lute being played “con forza”
would have seemed a kind of paradox. Some of these pieces do require the player
to push the instrument to the extreme of its dynamic range but there is a
subtler sense in which this music involves liuto con forza – it is
a matter of assertiveness, of a consciousness of holding the centre of the
musical stage, of reclaiming a musical authority it hasn’t held for composers
since the middle of the eighteenth century.
Peter Söderberg has always been an adventurous musician. He has appeared in
more than a few jazz ensembles and as a guitarist (though his main attention
has been given to the lute in recent years) he played plenty of contemporary
repertoire. As a lutenist he has recorded the music of the renaissance and
baroque but has also appeared on such genre-transcending albums as Trioloz
by the Christer Bothen Trio. He is the ideal performer for the works on
this present disc.
Varianti per Liuto solo was the very last piece written by that interesting
figure Bengt Hambræus during his final illness. Using unorthodox (scordatura)
tuning, Hambræus’ music includes some fierce climaxes which would have startled
any Renaissance lutenist and would doubtless have been met with disapproval.
But there are also some runs and phrases which might have elicited the admiration
of a Dowland or a Francesco da Milano. The opening of Ivo Nilsson’s Luta for
Theorbo takes us further back still, in that it echoes the sound of the oud,
the lute’s ancestor, hinting at its middle-eastern origins. Nilsson’s use
of microtonality creates a kind of bridge between those origins (at times
one seems to hear the sound of the sitar) and some thoroughly contemporary
idioms. Here the explorations of the instrument’s dynamic range – loud and
soft – produce some particularly intriguing results. The Piece for Lute and
Live Electronics by Erik Peters contains some moments of ethereal beauty,
the electronics sometimes supporting and extending the notes of the lute,
sometimes surrounding it with a halo of barely heard sound; at times the electronics
become an almost equal partner in a musical dialogue. This is a piece that
reveals new textures and relationships with repeated hearings.
Lars Ekström, in his Visions and Ashes for Theorbo quotes from Dowland (The
Frog Galliard), but only as the starting point for some distinctively modern
writing. The work is in three short movements, the last of them prompting
thoughts of the baroque fantasia, more by its fluidity of mood and line than
because it ever settles for mere pastiche. Apparently Ekström, Professor of
Composition and Instrumentation at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm,
has played the lute since his schooldays and the subtlety of his writing for
the instrument evidences his longstanding familiarity with it. The Four Pieces
for Lute by Ingvar Karkoff is for the baroque lute, rather than the renaissance
instrument, doesn’t strike one as being so peculiarly well-fitted to the lute,
and one misses Ekström’s intimate knowledge of the instrument’s possibilities.
The programme closes with another work for theorbo – Kent Olofsson’s Chemin
de Silence I-III. Here too there are echoes of the baroque – as Erik Wallrup
points out in his booklet notes, “the first and last section have chord sequences
than can be likened to passacaglia, while the second is more like a free toccata”.
The music requires an instrument retuned in quarter-tones and with additional
frets. Back in the late 1970s Olofsson played guitar with the progressive
rock band Opus Est, for which he also wrote much of the music (two albums
by the band can be heard on Spotify). He went on to study at the Malmö Academy
of Music – where Olofsson himself now teaches. The adapted theorbo used in
Chemin de Silence produces some deep, tick textures and some effects suggestive
of a kind of poetic mystery and even of religious expectation. It is very
striking music; like so much else on this disc it effects a remarkable extension
of the tradition of the lute.
Glyn Pursglove
Fascinating extensions of the lute and its music.