One of the most impressive
series of discs devoted to the lute
sonatas of Weiss comes from Robert Barto
whose Naxos recordings have been consistently
impressive and a source of much admiration;
I’ve reviewed him on this site and he
seems to me to be one of the most fully
equipped lute players currently before
the public. Whilst hoping that they
will continue to tape Barto until there’s
nothing left for him to record, we need
to take a detour with this latest Weiss
entrant, one that springs a surprise.
Firstly it conjoins
Weiss with the much later Viennese composer
Johann Hoffmann. And secondly it takes
incomplete works by Weiss. The scorings
may be complete but only the lute part
has survived. The British Library copies
of the two sonatas have no scoring indications
and the performers here have decided
to rewrite the sonatas for lute and
mandolin. This contentious decision
gives life to the works but what sort
of life is it?
It’s true that Weiss
composed for the combination of two
lutes and for lute and flute but nowhere
so far as is known for lute and mandolin.
The notes, which are very sketchy and
have an acreage of white paper, rather
half heartedly suggest that it’s "very
probable that Weiss would have encountered
mandolin players" amongst the Italian
players in Dresden. And possibly not.
The more acidic mandolin
contrasts strongly with the lute. This
arrangements work best in those passages
where echo effects bring a certain vivacity
and drama to the writing, such as La
Badinage from the D minor sonata.
These dialogue pages work well but sometimes
the phrasing sounds too heavy. The same
sonata’s Sicilien doesn’t come
to life and the heavy accents rather
hinder things. In the companion work
the Menuett responds best and
the Adagio least well. The former
has the advantage of crisp articulation
and speed, the latter falls prey to
an unlikely sonority and sounds correspondingly
stodgy and imperfectly sustained.
Hoffmann’s sonatas
were composed for mandolin and bass
– probably cello though Hoffmann’s contemporary
Giuliani specified that a lute and archlute
could be substituted. In the two Naxos
performances we duly have the duo of
archlute and mandolin. The three-movement
sonatas are variously virtuosic and
melodic and the combination sounds more
natural and convincing than the Weiss
sonatas. The Rondeau of the G
minor has some witty ritardandi, good
dynamics and some engaging Turkish themes.
And the Andante con variazione
of the D minor is felicitously shaped
and well played. Throughout I felt that
Birgit Schwab and Daniel Ahlert were
more comfortable in the later idiom
than in Weiss’.
Somewhat patchy all
round.
Jonathan Woolf
Birgit Schwab (baroque lute ¹. Archlute²)
