I'm often not fond of Hopkinson Smith's performance outside of the French Baroque realm, but this performance (along with Michael Schäffer's French Baroque album and 'Julian Bream plays Dowland' remain my favorite lute albums. Although Mr. Smith is very polite personally this performance of Vieux Gaultier is brusque, taciturn, morose, and despondent... all qualities that shine in this rhetoric. Also this particular lute by Van Lennep and production by Bernstein are both tops as well.
@SarniaLute Yes- Vieux Gaultier's music has a strong brash, acerbic, rude, brusque quality to it, and to play it without that won't work. The severe, the brusque, the awesomely poignant, the fleeting, the ludicrousity of being human, the taciturn and morosely misanthropic, the brutally concentrated & depressively despondent, the unmechanized passage of tim: those are the principle elements in Vieux Gaultier's music. There is nothing respectful, elegant, or polite in his mind.
Thanks a lot to post these musics and share with those interested by. Previously this CD was registred in 1988 for the french Label Audivis-Astrée and now distributed by Naïve. It includes 3 suites (Ré mineur, Fa dièse mineur, La Majeur) plus a lonesome piece "La Cascade". Hopkinson Smith performance is the best never registred. Ennemond Gaultier Sieur de Nèves was the most famous french lutenist of the broken style period but few of his music remains today because he never published.
I'm often not fond of Hopkinson Smith's performance outside of the French Baroque realm, but this performance (along with Michael Schäffer's French Baroque album and 'Julian Bream plays Dowland' remain my favorite lute albums. Although Mr. Smith is very polite personally this performance of Vieux Gaultier is brusque, taciturn, morose, and despondent... all qualities that shine in this rhetoric. Also this particular lute by Van Lennep and production by Bernstein are both tops as well.
VelikyUstyug1 1 year ago
@VelikyUstyug1 Do you really mean "brusque"? I think there may be a translation issue here. Brusque (in English) means coarse; rude.
SarniaLute 7 months ago
@SarniaLute Yes- Vieux Gaultier's music has a strong brash, acerbic, rude, brusque quality to it, and to play it without that won't work. The severe, the brusque, the awesomely poignant, the fleeting, the ludicrousity of being human, the taciturn and morosely misanthropic, the brutally concentrated & depressively despondent, the unmechanized passage of tim: those are the principle elements in Vieux Gaultier's music. There is nothing respectful, elegant, or polite in his mind.
VelikyUstyug1 7 months ago
Thanks a lot to post these musics and share with those interested by. Previously this CD was registred in 1988 for the french Label Audivis-Astrée and now distributed by Naïve. It includes 3 suites (Ré mineur, Fa dièse mineur, La Majeur) plus a lonesome piece "La Cascade". Hopkinson Smith performance is the best never registred. Ennemond Gaultier Sieur de Nèves was the most famous french lutenist of the broken style period but few of his music remains today because he never published.
frenchiecocorico1 2 years ago