Though
it has attracted less attention than some of the company’s
other ventures, the Naxos series of sonatas for lute by Weiss,
played by the American lutenist Robert Barto is one of which
the company can rightly be very proud.
Weiss
was the most significant lutenist of his age; born in what
is now Wrocław in Poland, his family, who served at
the local court, were already steeped in the traditions of
lute-playing and he was first taught by his father. At the
tender age of seven he was accomplished enough to play before
Emperor Leopold I. Beginning his career in Wrocław (or
Breslau as it then was), he went on to hold appointments
in Düsseldorf and Rome – where he was part of the retinue
of Prince Alexander Sobieski. After Sobieski’s death Weiss
seems initially to have made a kind of musical tour of Europe,
his playing being in such demand. In 1718 he chose to return
to ‘fixed’ employment, accepting a well-paid post at the
court in Dresden, where his colleagues included, at one time
or another, Fux, Pisendel, Quantz and Zelenka. Dresden remained
his base for the rest of his life, though the terms of his
employment also allowed him to also to travel. He was unsuccessfully
head-hunted by the Viennese court. He met Bach in Leipzig
in 1739. Little of Weiss’s music was published during his
lifetime.
In
this latest volume of his series, Robert Barto plays on a
thirteen-course lute, a design for which Weiss himself was
probably responsible. It is a tribute to Barto’s virtuosity
that he can handle so demanding an instrument with what sounds
like ease; what is even more important is the beauty and
subtlety of the music he makes upon it. Both of the sonatas – the
term effectively meaning ‘suite’ - on this CD are in six
movements. The B flat major sonata is made up of an allemande,
a courante, a paisane, a sarabande, a menuet and a gigue;
the sonata in F sharp minor consists of an allemande, a courante,
a bourrée, a sarabande, a menuet and a presto. Though precise
dates are hard to arrive at, sonata no.15 probably derives
from the 1720s, no. 48 from late in Weiss’s career, perhaps
as late as the 1740s.
Both
are full of superb music, from the serious grandeur of the
allemande which opens the earlier sonata to the dazzling
presto which closes the later one. This is a disc for all
lovers of the lute.
Glyn Pursglove
see also review by Jonathan Woolf
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Reviews of other issues in the Naxos Weiss lute sonata series
Volume 4
Volume 5
Volume 6
Robert Barto
(baroque lute) 
