Adelphi Saxophone Quartet: "Simply Four Saxophones" - Jean-Philippe Rameu - Jean Francaix - Gabriel Grovlez - Astor Piazzolla - Béla Bartók - Jean Rivier - G.F. Handel - J.S. Bach - Ferenc Farkas - George Gershwin - EMI Classics 1998

Someone recently (in a comment I haven't responded to yet, only noticed it in my gmail) requested the music of Ferenc Farkas, a very good lesser-known Hungarian composer. This fine recording  of music for Saxophone Quartet was the first disc that surfaced. I have the Toccata discs and some others and frankly now I'm quite eager to hear them all again! I have no time to comment, although I will quickly say that the Adelphi Quartet are exceptional. And, everything here is a great listen (if you enjoy saxophones...and if for some reason you don't...well, it's really about time you did!!)

Needless to say the Bartok is a "perfect 10" (the wonderfully rustic Romanian Folk Dances would sound good played on a kazoo!) and while I enjoy everything here, the Francaix, Farkas, Gershwin and Piazzolla also stand out the most imo.. 

The audio files for this album = 159 mb and yet when I compressed them, and then uploaded

the file to zippy it's 128.43 mb.. I would have expected it to be around 145 to 150mb. So I d/l it myself to check, and it seems to be fine. I dunnnooooooo

Enjoy the sax appeal.

Adelphi_Qt_Simply_Four_Saxophones-Tzadik.zip

http://www112.zippyshare.com/v/KEjgeq83/file.html

Bach in Lights: An art installation..

Beyond the aesthetics, I'm not sure that the "glowing notes" will help anyone to better grasp the notation of sections taken from The Well-Tempered Clavier. It is pleasing to look at so I guess that shouldn't matter. -I wonder what type of space would be required to do this will the entire Brandenburg Concertos - anyone have an airport they can spare? ;)

Taken from gizmodo:

Classical music is timeless, and if you don’t believe me, Bach compositions visually rendered as a CGI sequence of flashing fluorescent lights will hopefully convince you otherwise.

“Bach in Lights,” an animation by artist Alan Warburton featuring two compositions from The Well Tempered Clavier (Prelude and Fugue in C Major), is a clever fusion of classical music and modern animation tools. In this scene, hundreds of fluorescent light bulbs are hung in a gallery and parking garage, each one a physical representation of a single music note’s length and pitch. When a note is struck, its light, shadows, glows and reflections are rendered, creating a surprisingly life-like experience. It’s both technically astounding and incredibly soothing to watch. (Maddie Stone)

Steve Reich: Duet for Two Violins & Strings - J.S. Bach: Concerto for Violin & Oboe in C Minor - Igor Stravinsky: Dumbarton Oaks - Colin Jacobsen: Concerto for Santur, Violin, & Orchestra - The Knights: 'The Ground Beneath Our Feet' - The Knights

Time for yet another "unheard/unopened" offering. This time it's a new program of "old & new" sounds sharing the same concert program...in this case live, which I only just realized whilst listening to (yes..if you must know I was in the bathroom during the closing of Reich's Duet) the Bach Concerto (it's sprightly and very nicely done overall) once it's conclusion was reached. Either the audience agrees that it's an engaging performance or I have an odd case of tinnitus indeed. Impressive this is for a live performance, the sound is warm and full and the listener is not aware of those present during the recording until the applause. I bought this recording for Colin Jacobsen's "Concerto for Santur, Violin and Orchestra", which was co-written by Siamak Aghaei, who also plays the santur (Persian-era hammered dulcimer) here. I have been a fan of Jacobsen's music since I first discovered his own playing and music on one of the Brooklyn Rider (the NY-based string quartet) albums. It's always nice to have another version of Stravinsky's "Dumbarton Oaks" Concerto, the same goes for any Bach concerti really, and the Reich I found pleasant although I didn't pay enough attention to it this first time around. The last piece on the disc is a collaborative composition by several members of The Knights ensemble, which I know absolutely nothing about. Hopefully the Jacobsen piece will impress; I have been fond of the hammered dulcimer for a long time and within all types of musical settings...so I suppose I am forecasting or hoping for a genuine ear-festival ;)

Here's a brief blurb from the release: 

Recorded live in concert at Dumbarton Oaks in DC, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Stravinsky’s chamber concerto at the Washington estate for which it was originally named, "the ground beneath our feet" brings together radically divergent examples of the concerto grosso, by composers ranging from Bach and Haydn to those of the present day, by way of modern masters Stravinsky and Steve Reich. True to their collegial creed, The Knights’ own contribution to the form – the title track, …the ground beneath our feet, recorded here for the first time – is a genuine group composition, collaborative from inception to interpretation. Also receiving its world premiere recording is the Concerto for Santur, Violin, and Orchestra, which represents the third collaboration between longtime friends and musical partners Colin Jacobsen and Siamak Aghaei, leading exponent of the Iranian santur, or hammered dulcimer. The Knights juxtapose these two original concerto grossi with four earlier examples of the form. Representing its apotheosis in the Baroque is the Concerto for Violin and Oboe by J.S. Bach, whose third Brandenburg Concerto provided the model for Stravinsky’s neoclassical masterpiece “Dumbarton Oaks.” Steve Reich’s Duet for Two Violins and Strings is dedicated to Yehudi Menuhin and "the ideals of international understanding which he practiced throughout his life." 

And here is an article from (I think?) Minnesota Public Radio about the album, Colin Jacobsen's piece and the ensemble (The Knights):

Colin Jacobson grew up with a lot of music in his house.

"Our dad, from Minnesota, played violin in the Minnesota Orchestra, then the Milwaukee Symphony, then the Met Opera," Colin says. "We grew up with him and his friends playing chamber music in the living room whenever they weren't at the Met. I think we saw music as a very social and joyous activity from the beginning."

Colin Jacobson says as soon as he and his younger brother Eric were old enough, they carried on that tradition of making music with friends in their living room. Before long, that group of friends became a chamber ensemble called The Knights. Colin is a violinist and co-artistic director for the group with Eric, who plays cello and often directs the group.

On their newest recording, The Ground Beneath our Feet, Colin says the ensemble is moving much closer to its overall goal. "I think this album puts forward what the orchestra believes better than any other album up to this date, because it really comes from within the group," he says. "By using the Concerto Grosso as the jumping-off point in which individual voices come to the fore and then fade away, I think we tried to make that explicit."

As Colin explains it, The Ground Beneath our Feet is a title that really serves a dual purpose. "It's a little bit of a play on words," he says. "The 'ground' referring to the ground bass that forms the backbone of the piece. But I think it's also a sense that what we do as the Knights has to happen collectively. And it's the work we put in together that allows that ground to be there, so we can trust each other and play music."

Whenever this group gets together, there are constant brainstorming sessions where ideas of all kinds are tossed around. "This album is really a product of those conversations," Colin explains. "For instance, the title track is the brainchild of Alex Sopp, who is a flutist within the group. And she's also the multi-talented person who did the cover artwork, taking Stravinsky's face and having the universe sort of spew out of his mouth. It's really beautiful. She came up with this idea that we should create a piece collectively within the group. And to do that, she suggested using an old ground bass line, or chaconne, and for different people to write sketches or takes on that bass line. About seven people contributed original material to the piece, The Ground Beneath our Feet.

"For instance, it starts with a free improvisation led by Sean Conley, a bass player who outside of the Knights plays almost all jazz. And it ends with an original song by Christina Courtin, who is a violinist and also a wonderful singer-songwriter. And in the middle, I write a section that indulges my love of Persian music. My friend Johnny writes a section that showcases his love of salsa — and so it is a quilt, in a certain sense."

Isn't there also an Irish jig?

"Yes," Colin says, "and the person who wrote that is someone who is now in Minnesota, playing principal bass with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Zack Cohen. We get to borrow him every now and then."

Colin's passion for Persian music resulted in the world-premiere recording of the Concerto for Santur, Violin and Orchestra, which he co-wrote with Siamak Aghaei, a Persian musician Colin met while touring with The Silk Road Ensemble. "The piece starts with a three-minute opening invocation by Siamak — not on the santur but the dutar, which is a two-stringed, long-necked lute often used by bards in central Asia," Colin explains. "In the middle of the piece is a cadenza for santur, the hammered dulcimer of Iran and he sings during it, a chant. It's incredibly beautiful. When I heard him do that, it was so deep, so sad — nostalgic for a place a long time ago and I thought the material could form some of the backbone of the piece. And then I contributed original material and tried to find a way to weave his instrument and his tradition into the orchestra."

This new release was actually recorded on what Colin and his brother Eric consider to be somewhat hallowed ground. "We made this recording and played Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks a year ago, and it was the 75th anniversary of that piece being written for that place — it's a beautiful historic mansion in Washington, D.C.," Colin says. "And when Stravinsky was writing that piece, he was thinking about Bach and his Brandenburg concerti. That piece has a different part for every single person in the orchestra. So it's really the sense of individuality within the collective, through the wonderfully quirky lens of Stravinsky. And another sense-of-place thing: I mentioned my dad — he played that piece there about halfway between its being written and us playing it there. I'm not sure it's with Stravinsky conducting … it might have been Robert Craft conducting. That was a nice feeling, for my brother and me to be there, knowing that our dad had done the same thing there, half our lifetimes' ago."

Let's all enjoy, shall we?

The_Knights-The_Ground_Beneath_Our_Feet-Tzadik.zip

http://www24.zippyshare.com/v/ELLKzZOb/file.html

Chicago Trombone Consort - Works by: Vaclav Nelhybel - Giovanni Gabrieli - Giovanni Battista Pergolesi - Richard Strauss - Eugène Bozza - Rob Deemer - Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina - Enrique Crespo - Josef Rhineberger - J.S. Bach

Here's a quirky disc for all fans of trombone music. The composers represented here run the gamut from the Renaissance to the contemporary, and I must say it's an interesting ride.

The Chicago Trombone Consort is made up of principals, nine on this disc, based in and around Chicago. The consort was founded in 2008, this being its debut recording. It certainly lives up to its intention of offering a varied program. Within the first 10 minutes or so one lurches from a pleasant opening fanfare (the Czech composer Vaclav Nelhybel, rather unknown, was quite prolific in almost every genre, and has a style that is somewhat like Martinu, especially in his orchestral writing) that starts with a delightful low raspberry, via an arrangement of ceremonial Gabrieli, then a rather suave contemporary piece by the English composer Jeremy Dibb, followed by the Pergolesi trio sonata, whose first and third movements are instantly recognizable from Stravinsky’s "Pulcinella".

And then (with far too short a pause), comes the disconcerting sound of the opening of Strauss’'s Alpine Symphony. This is a fascinating relaying of the big work for trombone quartet, or rather a judiciously selected 11 minutes of it, presenting mainly the slow sonorous passages. Wisely, the arranger, Ben Mansted, has eschewed most of the vigorous tramping up the mountain, which would have surely been implausible, to say the least, on four trombones, resulting in a rather skewed impression of the original. The trombone solo at the beginning of “'Entering the Forest”' is the only miscalculation in the recital, having something of the associations of lachrymose music hall (vaudeville?) soloists. Otherwise the arrangement is curiously successful on its own terms.

The Rob Deemer’ piece, "Shock and Awe", is a commission from the Chicago Trombone Quartet, a subset of the present band. It is a deliberately facetious and ironic work in three short movements, of which the middle one, 'Calls/Responses', is more than half the whole work and juxtaposes widely disparate music. The opening of the first movement reminds me not only of Hovhaness's signature trombone glissandi and.....also of Harpo Marx when he would squeeze any number of horns that he kept stashed within his trench coat. Truly the laughter of the trombone is right out of the Marx Brother's "Duck Soup". It's wacky and good fun that even nods at the lighter music of Shostakovich in its jauntiness. Whether the jolliness of the final movement, 'Brave New World', is intended to be straight or ironic, is hard to say.

Next is Palestrina—'s stately "Ecce veniet dies ills", something of a chaser after the Deemer work. In Enrique Crespo’'s "Bruckner Etude" one immediately thinks of Bruckner’'s "Aequali" and the "E-Minor Mass", and it is as if Bruckner’s idiom has been thickened by 20th-century Romanticism. Its sound world harks back to track 9, the music of 'Calls/Responses'. Eugène Bozza’'s "Andantino" is another stylistic hybrid. Bozza, who was French (d.1991), wrote plenty of brass music, and this piece, all of 2:18, starts with a theme dangerously close to Ravel’s "Pavane pour une infante defunte". (on trombone, of course). Mark Fisher’'s arrangement of Rhineberger’'s "Abendlied" adds a bit more glorious sonority before the recording finishes with the Bach Passacaglia.

Track listing:

1)Vaclav Nelhybel (1919-1996) - "Tower Music" (2:28)
2)Giovanni Gabrieli - "Canzon Septimi Toni No. 2" ( H. Lloyd Leno, arr.; Peter Ellefson, arr.)  (2:51)
3)Jeremy Dibb (b. 1960)  - "Provence" (4:15)

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (Ralph Sauer, arr.) - "Trio Sonata No. 4" (5:52)
4)I. Allegro (2:23)
5)II. Adagio (2:14) 
6)III. Presto e staccato  (1:13)

7)Richard Strauss (Mansted. B., arr.) - "Alpine Fantasy" (10:47)

Rob Deemer (b. 1970) - "Shock and Awe for Trombone Quartet" (9:09)
8)Spin Cycles (1:59)
9)Calls/Responses (4:44)
10)Brave New Worlds (2:25)

11)Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina - "Ecce veniet dies illa" (3:06)
12)Enrique Crespo (b. 1941) - "Bruckner Etude fur das tiele Blech" (5:54)
13)Eugène Bozza (1905-1991) - "Andantino for Trombone Trio" (2:23)
14)Josef Rhineberger (1839-1901) (Mark Fisher, arr.) - "Abendlied Op. 69, No. 3" (2:44)
15)Johann Sebastian Bach; Donald Hunsberger - "Passacaglia in C Minor" (5:30)

Enjoy

Chicago_Trombone_Consort-Tzadik.zip

http://www12.zippyshare.com/v/K7SrV0iT/file.html

J.S. Bach - Keyboard Concerto No.1 in D minor - Paul Hindemith - The Four Temperaments: Theme with Four Variations for Piano & Strings - Ernst Bloch - Concerto Grosso No.1 for String Orch. with Piano Obbligato - MSR Classics 2013

I  must say am having a rollicking good time unwrapping discs purchased in or around 2013. Truly it's the same kind of excitement as if I had just received them in the mail; after all I don't know what I'm about to find in these piles-simply because I was still able to buy so much at that time and can't keep track (Has anyone else out there ever bought the same disc twice? This has happened to me....a few times ;)   So here we have three works for Piano & String Orchestra. Paul Hindemith's "The Four Temperaments" is one of my favorite Hindemith works but also one of my favorite piano + orchestra compositions in general. I have many recordings of it, and thus far I'm extremely pleased with this interpretation, the pianist and string players are playing with passion and obvious enthusiasm, and I like their choice of tempi very much. Bloch's Concerti Grossi are also favorite works of mine, and here his "Concerto Grosso No. 1" is also played extremely well start to finish. As far as the ubiquitous Bach keyboard concerto goes, there's really nothing that needs to be said; I'm sure most of you also have a dozen or more recordings of this wonderful but overplayed concerto. The reading here is good, although the sound quality is not as good (-unless it's my imagination? The orchestra playing the Bach is the same that pulls off the Hindemith so well-only the Bloch is performed by a different orchestra. Tell me if I'm just having hearing problems!) as on the Hindemith and Bloch works. 

"The Four Temperaments - Theme with Four Variations for Piano and Strings" was composed when Hindemith first established himself in the United States in 1940. The origins of this work are somewhat murky. According to the website of the the New York City Ballet, it was commissioned by George Balanchine to give himself something to play (the famous choreographer was an accomplished pianist, but it is not clear whether or not he ever actually performed the work). The first public performance did not take place that same year (as is stated in almost all reference sources) but four years later in 1944 when Lukas Foss played it with the Boston Symphony under Richard Burgin at a special concert at the New England Mutual Hall on September 3rd; the work was later repeated at Symphony Hall as part of the orchestra's regular season.

In 1946, Balanchine founded 'Ballet Society', the predecessor of the New York City Ballet, and he choreographed the Theme with Four Variations under the title "The Four Temperaments" for the first performances of the company. The premiere was on November 20th, 1946 at the Central High for Needle Trades (the predecessor to the Fashion Institute of Technology) with a cast that included Tanaquil Le Clerc and Todd Bolender; the pianist was Nicholas Kopeikine and the conductor Leon Barzin.

The notion that human behavior is dominated by four humors or temperaments each connected to a bodily fluid- black bile for the 'melancholic', blood for the 'sanguine', phlegm for the 'phlegmatic' and yellow bile for the 'choleric'- goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks and, although long since abandoned by the medical profession, continues to have some poetic or literary currency. Was it Hindemith's idea or the choreographer's to apply this program to the music? Ironically, while the titles appear to push this score away from pure musical abstraction, the ballet was in fact a big step in Balanchine's evolution away from narrative dance. Hindemith's musical interpretation of this idea is not simply musically, let alone programmatically. The work, although classical in its use of piano and strings and its expanded C major - C minor - E flat tonality, does not exactly fit the mold of a classical or baroque concerto or of a conventional theme and variations. The theme itself has three distinct parts: a Moderato in the strings with a long lyric melody, a tocatta or scherzo-like Allegro assai led off and finished by the piano and later joined by the strings, and a Moderato in the style of a 6/8 siciliano, finished up by the strings only-first solo, and then later with pizzicato accompaniment and an embellished piano solo in the middle.

The first variation "Melancholy", might suggest a dance of death. It starts as a slow, mournful 9/8 duet between the solo piano and a solo violin followed by a whirlwind 12/8 Presto for the strings alone. It ends with a funeral march in in E-flat minor with a drum-roll rhythmic figure in the piano and a dramatic, sinister melody in the strings.

"Sanguine" is the only variation that does not change tempo; it is a landler (18th century folk dance) style waltz dominated by the strings with rhythmic punctuations and 'oom-pahs' from the piano and, except for an occasional insertion of 2/4 bars, it maintains the 3/4 waltz tempo throughout. There is a kind of Trio introduced by a sequence of trills in the piano and then with running notes in octaves in the piano over pizzicato and then melodic strings. The strings pick up the running motion before a return to the main waltz in a particularly melodic form. The movement ends with a dynamic buildup over harmonic stasis- running notes in the piano over a steady E minor in the strings.

The third variation, "Phlegmatic", begins Moderato in 4/4 with solo string quartet in a typically Hindemithian expanded version of the key of C major. A 12/8 Allegretto in the form of a slow dance belongs to the piano with occasional brief interruptions from the solo strings; the meter and the shifting tonality give it a kind of 'tipsy' character. A piano solo in octaves leads leads into a rather jolly folk-like Allegro scherzando in 2/4, dominated by the solo strings with the piano offering mostly rhythmic/chordal accompaniment. The piano suddenly goes quiet and the variation fades to a rhythmic pianissimo in E-flat. 

The last variation "Choleric" begins with a kind of dramatic accompanied recitative in a constantly shifting tempo. The strings and piano offer loud and louder interjections, outlining the double-tonality of C major and E flat major. A Vivace in 2/4 begins with pizzicato strings, and interpolations from the piano turn into off-beat 'oom-pahs' (this section is one of my favorites!) before going back to a reverse series interpolations and pizzicatos. The Appassionato that follows is in a sweeping 12/8 with rich octave melodies in the strings and call-and-response between the strings and piano. The movement and the work culminate in a Maestoso which starts quietly with rising eighth notes in the piano that accompany sweeping octaves in the strings and lead to a triple forte C major climax.

This work leaves me gleefully breathless time and again :)

Ernst Bloch's fantastic Concerto Grosso No.1 has already been posted here (with No.2 as well) on a CPO disc, so I won't discuss it in this post.

Track listing:

J.S. Bach - Concerto No.1 in D minor for Keyboard and Strings, Bwv 1052

1)Allegro (7:54)

2)Adagio (8:17)

3)Allegro (7:46)

Paul Hindemith - "The Four Temperaments" for Piano and Strings

4)Thema - Moderato; Allegro assai; Moderato (5:45)

5)First Variation - Melancholisch: Langsam; Presto; Langsamer Marsch (5:50)

6)Second Variation - Sanguinisch: Waltzer (5:18)

7)Third Variation - Phlegmatisch: Moderato; Allegretto; Allegretto scherzando (4:58)

8)Fourth Variation - Cholerisch: Introduction; Vivace; Appassionato; Maestoso (6:27)

Ernst Bloch - "Concerto Grosso No.1 for String Orchestra and Piano Obbligato

9)Prelude: Allegro energico e pesante (2:56)

10)Dirge: Andante moderato (6:41)

11)Pastorale and Rustic Dances: Assa lento; Allegro; Moderato, ma non troppo lento (6:53)

12)Fugue: Allegro (5:31)

Enjoy!

Bach_Bloch_Hindemith_Works_for_Piano_&_Orchestra-Tzadik.zip

http://www21.zippyshare.com/v/dBK0Ho42/file.html

J.S. Bach - The Transcriptions for Solo Harpsichord of Concertos by Vivaldi and the Marcello Brothers - Sophie Yates, Harpsichord - Chandos 2013

These elegant and delicious transcriptions for solo harpsichord I have been listening to much the last

couple days; I am indebted to Pappa Bach for distracting me from a good deal of chaos over the week. Sophie Yates plays this music with such precision and mastery; something to behold indeed! 

Around 1714 J.S. Bach suddenly (and apparently without provocation) transcribed and adapted a number of Italian instrumental concertos, mainly by Antonio Vivaldi, for the keyboard. Why he did so is subject to some speculation, though it is often suggested that he had become aware of the publication a couple of years earlier in Amsterdam of Vivaldi’s op. 3 L’estro armonico, possibly through the efforts of his patron, Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. While it's true that his main duties in Weimar at the time were mainly as an organist, he also provided a host of other musical services, including secular concerts, for which these transcriptions were probably most adaptable. Moreover, they offered him the opportunity to absorb thoroughly the popular Italian style. 

Clearly, a simple transcription would not suffice for the sort of work that Bach envisioned, and moreover there are inevitable difficulties in arranging the various orchestral ritornellos, though of course the unison openings offered an immediate solution. His arrangements often transpose the works to fit the keyboard compass better. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the version of Alessandro Marcello's Oboe Concerto, now transposed up a whole step to D Minor, or in the C-Minor Concerto by his brother Benedetto, which was originally in E Minor. The result is to bring the works into a more intimate and manageable focus, even though they do not lose their often virtuoso lines. The result is somewhat of a tour de force that has intrigued keyboardists (mainly harpsichordists) for a long time. Moreover, the art of the transcription reaches pretty much its apex here, for one cannot deny that Bach has essentially turned these concertos into brand-new works, in essence deconstructing and recomposing already well-known and acknowledged significant pieces, thus giving them an alternative life. 

Enjoy all

J.S.Bach_Transcriptions_for_Solo_Harpsichord-Tzadik.zip

http://www62.zippyshare.com/v/NIfesj8M/file.html

Bach & Weiss: Suite for Lute and Violin in A Major - Johann Kropffganss - Karl Kohaut - Friedrich Wilhelm Rust - Music for Lute, Violin and Cello - Vivarte 2001

This disc is like a bowl of candy, for anyone who loves Baroque music and lute music especially. I certainly do and the "Bach/Weiss" Suite for Lute and Violin in A Major is just sublime. The works by the three lesser known composers are also very fine, and one delight following another is the result on this album. I'm only adding here information about Weiss and the connection with Bach-you can read about the other composers (and more info on Bach/Weiss)  in the booklet notes.

Silvius Leopold Weiss was, and still is, regarded as the greatest of all lutenists, and the instrument fell into decline within two decades of his death. An evaluation by the Markgrafin Wilhelmine de Bayreuth, sister of Frederick II of Prussia and herself a composer, would serve well as epitaph: "Weiss excels so much in playing the Lute that no one has ever matched him, and those who will come after him will only be left with the glory of imitating him"

Weiss was one of the most important and most prolific composers of lute music in history and one of the best-known and most technically accomplished lutenists of his day. He wrote around 600 pieces for lute, most of them grouped into 'sonatas' (not to be confused with the later classical sonata, based on sonata form) or suites, which consist mostly of Baroque dance pieces. Weiss also wrote originally extensive repertory of chamber music, lute duets, and concertos, but only the solo parts have survived; in every case the parts that accompany the solo lute are lost. Some of his "Suonate" (Weiss's own term) for solo lute, which have come down to us in a variety of tablature manuscripts, are missing their preludes, which were usually improvised. Seventy suites, however, are known in their entirety; most last about 20 to 25 minutes in performance. As a composer, Weiss shows extraordinary originality; his suites stand comparison with those of J.S. Bach. Only one of the suites, No. 49 in B flat minor, appeared in print during Weiss' own lifetime; his work was not intended for amateur players but for virtuosi whose skills approached his own. 

Weiss's music is characterized by a unique understanding of the capabilities of his instrument, and its strengths and its weaknesses. Like J.S. Bach's, it represents the culmination of a high Baroque style a little at odds with the more progressive aspirations of his younger contemporaries. Weiss was also in demand as a teacher. His many aristocratic pupils included the young Frederick the Great and his sisters Wilhelmena (later Margravine of Bayreutlt) and Anna Amalia, Princess of Prussia, and his other pupils included the lutenists Adam Falckenhagen and Johann Kropffganss (whose own music is on this recording)

Silvius Leopold Weiss

Silvius Leopold Weiss's skill as a player and accompanist was legendary, as were his powers of improvisation. In this he was even compared with J.S. Bach, though it is doubtful whether they actually formally competed in improvisation, as the following account by Johann Friedrich Reichardt describes:

"Anyone who knows how difficult it is to play harmonic modulations and good counterpoint on the lute will be surprised and full of disbelief to hear from eyewitnesses that Weiss, the great lutenist, challenged J. S. Bach, the great harpsichordist and organist, at playing fantasies and fugues."

Weiss and J.S. Bach had been in all probability well known to one another even before they actually met. In later life, Weiss became a friend of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. During 1739 Weiss stayed in Leipzig for four weeks (together with W.F. Bach and his own pupil Johann Kropffganss) and he visited the J.S. Bach house frequently. Johann Elias Bach, J.S. Bach's personal secretary, reports that the music he heard then was 'extra-special'. He wrote that "we heard some very fine music when my cousin from Dresden (Wilhelm Friedemann Bach) came to stay for four weeks, together with the famous lute-player Mr. Weiss". J.S. Bach's Suite for violin and harpsichord in A major BWV 1025, which was finally identified as an arrangement of one of Weiss' lute sonatas, likely owes its origin to one of these legendary meetings. It's quite special to these ears!

Enjoy...

Bach_&_Weiss_Suite_for_Lute_&_Violin_Tzadik.zip

http://www38.zippyshare.com/v/WxDiPxt0/file.html