Baroque giants on the lute

Abstract

To make arrangements of Bach's music for instruments other than those for which it was originally conceived is a long and honourable tradition, going back to the master himself, of course, and in recent years many performers (including Nigel North, Hopkinson Smith and Andrew Maginley) have arranged and recorded solo instrumental works, notably the cello suites, for Baroque lute. Others, meanwhile, have transcribed them for allied instruments, such as the theorbo or the Baroque guitar. So it is a sort of homecoming to hear two recent discs consisting mainly of music selected from those solo works actually either directed by Bach to be played on the lute, or intabulated for lute in his own lifetime—a repertory of just seven pieces in all: BWV995–1000 and 1006a. Andreas Martin, in Bach: Lute works (Harmonia Mundi Iberica HMI 987051, rec 2004, 47′), presents four out of these seven works, the six-movement suite...