The revival of the lute and its repertoire in the later twentieth century has been so thorough that it is difficult now to remember how much a "distant shore" the instrument seemed to musicians even a few generations ago. Like the cornett or the viola da gamba or the harpsichord, it was an instrument - and a repertoire, and a set of performance practices - that was all but dead for many years, that needed to be revived more or less from scratch. As for the lute music of the later Baroque period, it represents an instrument long past its heyday: even late-Baroque musicians themselves considered the lute a distant shore - an anachronism.

15 years ago lutenist Jakob Lindberg bought a very special instrument - one of the four extant lutes by Sixtus Rauwolf, built c.1560. The restoration of the lute took several years and was rather painstaking: for some repairs they een used ancient wood from the library in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence! Considering the great age of the instrument it was nevertheless in good shape and is now probably the only one in the world that, retaining its orignal soundboard, is in playable condition. This unique feature Lindberg has wanted to celebrate by recording music suitable for the instrument. Once upon a time, probably in 1715, this lute was equipped with a new neck allowing for a greater number of courses. This makes it perfect for the lute works of Silvius Leopold Weiss (1687-1750), famous among his contemporaries as the finest lutenist of his generation. (There is some reason to believe that Bach composed a couple of his works for solo lute after having met Weiss in 1739.) Weiss was also the most prolific of all lute composers: some 600 pieces have survived, whcih may amount to half of his entire production for the instrument. Most of the pieces on this disc are early works, grouped in suites - or Sonatas as Weiss himself termed them - by the composer himself or, in some cases, by Jakob Lindberg. Included are some of Weiss's best-known works, e.g. the 'Fantasie in C minor' as well as one of his rare fuguges for lute.