Including many world-premiere recordings, the first-ever album dedicated to the music of a 16th-century lutenist-composer from Padova: a sequence of virtuosic, restlessly inventive fantasias and dances. The music on this album is drawn from a 1582 collection, Novae tabulae musicae testudinariae hexachordae et heptachordae. The frontispiece shows a figure, likely Barbetta himself, casting a broken lute into the fire, beneath which reads a defiant inscription: 'I shall never willingly entrust the lute to the ignorant or the envious, but to one born of flame shall I commit it - for neither ignorance nor envy shall ever be able to achieve what he can.' Beyond the collection itself, little is known about it's author, Cecilio Cesare Barbetta (c. 1540-c. 1623). Living and working in the university city of Padova, Barbetta was evidently exposed to German cultural models through the members of the German nobility who passed through the city. Many of his 14 Fantasias are intricate four-part contrapuntal works, requiring both technical mastery and a deep understanding of musical structure from the performer. By contrast, Barbetta also wrote (or elaborated) not only traditional Italian dances like the Saltarello but also pieces with exotic character, such as the Moresca, a traditional Moorish dance from North Africa. This album has been a labour of love for the Japanese lutenist Mikiya Kaisho, whose booklet essay details his work in transcribing Barbetta's music from facsimiles of the original tablatures. 'My hope was to craft a musical narrative,' he writes, 'carefully designed to allow anyone to enjoy the lute's delicate and intimate resonance in daily life, on a journey through a vibrant and multifaceted sound world.'

After the success of the complete works for lute by J. S. Bach, crowned by the recognition of international critics (Diapason d'Or, Choc de Classica, Excepcional Scherzo, Record Geijutsu, Eccezionale di Musica, Joker Absolu Crescendo), Evangelina offers a double album dedicated to the music of the greatest lutenist of all time: Sylvius Leopold Weiss. In his work, virtuosity and sumptuousness merge against the elegant and ethereal background of the gallant encounters and court dances of the 18th century. A new recording that restores the lute to it's due and ancient glories.

Hans Neusidler (1508-1563) was born in Pressburg (today Bratislava, Slovakia) and first enters the historical record in 1530, when he settled in Nuremberg, Germany. He taught lute there in the 1530s, publishing eight books of lute music between 1536 and 1549, and also went into business as a lute maker by 1550. Neusidler was one of the most important early German lutenists. His eight publications feature intabulations of German songs, French chansons, Italian madrigals, dance pieces, and preludes of an improvisatory nature. Most of the works are in three parts, but there are two-part pieces for beginners and a few four-part arrangements in two of his publications.

Lutenist Yavor Genov presents on this album a selection of works by Neusidler, emphasizing his significance as one of the most prominent and bright lutenists of his generation, but also as one of those instrumentalists, who successfully adopted the contrapuntal musical language of the great Franco-Flemish school to the lute playing. Yavor Genov is a lutenist and basso continuo player. His three solo CDs for Brilliant Classics – “Orpheus Anglorum” (2018), “Zamboni – lute music” (2014) and “Kapsberger – Libro primo di lauto” (2013) have received international critical acclaim. He has collaborated with musicians like Dame Emma Kirkby, Núria Rial, Andrew Lawrence-King, Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Teodor Currentzis. Yavor has studied early plucked instruments and basso continuo with Jakob Lindberg.

In November 2022 Fretwork return for the second instalment of their cycle of works by Matthew Locke. Matthew Locke was born 400 years ago in 1622, and while he is often ranked as one of England’s finest composers, he is still unaccountably neglected: his music may not be as immediately appealing as his immediate successor, Henry Purcell, nor as wide-ranging as William Byrd, yet his forceful musical personality and luxuriant technique place him in the first echelon of English composers, with his works described by Richard Boothby of Fretwork as having a “quixotic, capricious restlessness that is constantly challenging the listener to follow his argument ... a thrilling musical ride”. Accompanying Fretwork on continuo for this recording are David Miller (archlute and theorbo) and Silas Wollston (harpsichord). The cover of the album bares an inscription in the walls by the choir stall of Exeter Cathedral, thought to have been carved by the composer during his time as a member of the choir there.

REVIEWS:

In most of the suites, Fretwork exploits the textural and percussive effects of the theorbo and harpsichord - both played with terrific flair - which articulate the all-pervasive dance rhythms. In the serene F major Suite No. 6, omitting the continuo highlights the sparse transparency of the three-part texture and Fretwork ‘play plain’ its interlaced melodies, weaving them into a sheer fabric of sound.

The players obviously relish these convivial musical conversations and the album makes for felicitous listening and, for the uninitiated, a perfect introduction to Locke’s viol consorts.

-- BBC Music Magazine

An intriguing recording: on first playing, I found this album difficult to get into, an experience. However, with repeated listenings it did it start to reveal its true – and beautiful – self. These ‘Pavans, Ayres, Corants and Sarabands’ by Matthew Locke are strange things indeed. It is the strangely shifting, uncanny edge to Locke’s music that is his trademark – and Fretwork here transform it into something beguiling.

Most intriguing are the fleeting moments when Fretwork do not sound like a viol consort. Locke’s designation of the book as ‘for viols or violins’ acknowledges that the viol was soon to be usurped by the violin; here, Fretwork embody this historical juncture through a flexibility and agility of stroke.

-- Gramophone