This attractively presented disc is not the same one recorded by Japanese-French lutenist
Yasunori Imamura for the Capriccio label in 1998, even though the keys of the two lute sonatas, and the presence of a central pair of shorter works, makes the program look almost identical.
Sylvius Leopold Weiss was nearly an exact contemporary of
Bach's, and the notes by
Beat Hänggi contend that were it not for the difficulty and obscurity of the lute, he would be nearly as well known as today. That's hard to swallow, considering the versatility of
Bach's talents and the fact that
Weiss occupies one small corner of the Baroque musical universe. Nevertheless,
Bach is thought to have admired
Weiss' playing, and may have written lute music for him. The comparison has some validity. The notes go into the mixture of French and Italian elements in the two "sonatas" recorded here; they bear the sonata name although they consist of suites of French dances (allemande, courante, bourrée, sarabande, and so on). There is certainly an Italian influence, but the real similarity is indeed to
Bach --
Weiss does not overlay his dances with encrustations of ornament in the French manner, but packs them full of dense harmonic processes and contrapuntal textures.
Imamura is a master of the complexities of the 13-course lute, and he imbues his music with an appropriately imposing quality. Especially notable is the final work on the disc, a Sonata in A minor that has no opening prelude, but to which
Imamura has added an improvised one -- a procedure fully in keeping with expectations of the era.
Imamura's improvisation veers off with a perfectly timed excursion into a remote key. The Prélude and Fantasie that form an intermezzo for the disc are two separate pieces, not a single two-part work as the tracklist implies, but they too receive impressively dramatic readings from
Imamura, who in general strikes a fine balance between the formal and the virtuoso aspects of the music. The sound is close up and intense, with enough string noise and the like to distract those who prefer a more distanced recording style.