Hopkinson Smith plays Weiss on a 1755 Widhalm Swan-neck Baroque Lute

00:00 introduction

Suite d-moll
0:09 Prélude
1:29 Allemande
4:51 Courante
6:33 Menuets I und II
9:02 Bourrée
10:48 Sarabande
13:06 Gigue
14:55 Tombeau sur la Mort de M. Conte de Logy arrivée 1721

23:40 Prélude und Fantasie c-moll

Suite D-dur
28:15 Prélude
29:59 Aria
35:04 Courante
38:20 Sarabande
42:48 Passagaille
46:52 Gigue


The Widhalm lute is similar to an aged aristocratic
general, the hero of battles long since fought, still
with an elegant and proud bearing, but also, no longer
the tactician he once was. The strengths of the
instrument - apart from the amazing phenomenon
that it has survived in playing condition without
restoration - lie in its wonderfully rich bass register
and in the clear singing quality of the upper strings
(the first five courses were strung in gut for this
recording). Its strong qualities include a middle
register with less power than it probably had originally, and also a mild stubbornness on the part of
the instrument in lighter movement whose agile
passagework could have been more clearly realized
on a more flexible modern instrument.
The decision on my part to use an original instrument does not come from any self-righteous assertion that the music of a particular period is “supposed” to sound in one specific way and that we must therefore adhere to burdensome “rules” of a time and style. It comes rather from, first of all, a natural curiosity to see what old instruments are like - so few are in playable condition and they can normally be borrowed only for a specific project - and secondly, the desire to see just how this instrument and this music would adapt to each other. This project remains as much a document of a magnificent 18th century lute (the first to be recorded, I believe) as it is a testament to the greatest 18th century Iutenist composer.
Three notes on the programming:
1) In the Dresden Weiß Manuscript version of the D minor Suite, what is here played as a minuet en rondeau is copied out as two distinct Minuets separated by the Sarabande. I have chosen rather to make one more substantial piece out of the two and to build n more dramatic pacing into the suite by pairing the Sarabande with the Gigue.
2) The Prélude and Fantasy in C minor are also separated in the British Museum Weiß Ms from which they come, but are here combined. Out of the turmoil of harmonic instability of the Prélude, enters the unmeasured but more stable opening of an old friend, the C minor Fantasie, one of the best known lute pieces of Weiß.
3) The last suite is a regrouping of some of the best pieces in D major from different parts of the British Museum Ms. Despite their dispersion in the manuscript, there are thematic similarities between the movements (especially the Aria and Sarabande), and they fit together into a well proportioned suite.