Bach on the Lute
Likely the association of Bach with virtuoso Silvius Leopold Weiss led to him leaving us works for lute. By Bach’s time the lute’s heyday was out, but he did leave us a few works of exquisite beauty, even if some are arrangements. This hasn’t stopped lutenists from going further by adapting yet more works by Bach for their instrument, understandably. In this review I wanted to review two relative new releases for Bach lute works. The first, an older of the pair, is on Audax with Jadran Duncumb. The second, from Arcana, is by Evangelina Mascardi. The CDs, however, are not identical with the music.
The 2 CD set by Mascardi includes:
- BWV 995*
- BWV 996
- BWV 997*
- BWV 998
- BWV 999*
- BWV 1000*
- BWV 1006a
Duncumb’s recital includes the pieces starred from the above list. Dumcumb wrote his own notes which I found both personal and historically interesting. The notes for Mascardi’s album are also good, written by guitarist, lutenist, and musicologist Frédéric Zigante.
Both recordings are done with the microphones close to the instrument. The Audax recording picks up far more detail from the performer, including his breathing. Looking at Paul O’Dette, it wouldn’t be the first recording of lute music to grab a significant amount of the player’s own sounds. Musically speaking, the recording by Mascardi is easier to listen to.
As I am auditioning both of these side by side from Qobuz with headphones, I find Duncumb’s audible sounds distracting at times but not to the point to advise avoiding the album; my experience tells me these details will be less noticeable with a loudspeaker setup, but of course it depends on how revealing your setup is.
For me, the track listings of Mascardi’s recording via Qobuz are incorrect which is frustrating. Even using my Roon software makes fixing the error problematic.
Both performers are excellent lutenists and so I find it nearly impossible to recommend one recording over another. And if you’re like me, listening via a streaming service, I’d happily recommend both.
I listened carefully to the two renditions of the Bach fugue, BWV 1000 in G minor. Mascardi was more timely against a metronome. Duncumb’s reading in general are a bit more personal? He takes greater liberties with rubato and emphasizing how the music feels. I can only guess, but that’s not to say that Mascardi is a slave to the clock. She too feels the music but perhaps holds back in comparison to Duncumb’s interpretive solutions.
The other piece I paid special attention to was the suite in C minor, BWV 997. The acoustic temperature changes in Mascardi’s album when you go to this suite from another part of the disc: it’s obvious it’s been recorded under different conditions. The opening prélude by Bach is sublime. (It’s called a Fantasia in the Duncumb album.) Both lutenists take their time with the Fugue which I like faster. The rendition by Sean Schibe on guitar is among my favorites, which shaves off more than a minute on Dumcumb’s time, the faster of the two being reviewed here. The fugue, though, reveals for me a slight preference I have for the smaller cells Dumcumb articulates in his playing. Mascardi’s approach does very a nice job with what I might call classical phrasing; the difference is a articulation of the smaller musical groupings of notes at maybe what we’ll call the sub-phrase level that is part of Dumcumb’s style. It’s more interesting to me, but both are ultimately rewarding.
The final gigue feels some what labored under Dumcumb’s fingers; Mascardi’s faster performance with her longer phrasing ultimately I found more rewarding.
In the end these are two recordings that I found both interesting and technically satisfying—both lutenists are top-class. The differences in recording quality aside, I probably like the phrasing Dumcumb adopts slightly more, but going back and forth only reveals how both approaches really work.
Sorry to say, two different, but otherwise accomplished recordings by Bach. If you only had to pick one, Mascardi’s is more complete; to be fair, Dumcumb has recorded more Bach under separate cover, but different pieces, alongside pieces by Weiss.
