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Bach: Works for Lute Vol 2 / Goran Sollscher

Release Date: 12/04/2014
Label: Deutsche Grammophon Catalog #: 413719 Spars Code: DDD
Composer:  Johann Sebastian Bach Performer:  Göran Söllscher Number of Discs: 1
Recorded in: Stereo

Goran Sollscher's accounts of what are often described (as they are here) as Bach's 'works for the lute'—though any legal action based on such flimsy evidence would probably never even reach court—are here brought together. Other guitarists have covered the same territory but not in any comparable way; Sollscher uses a guitar with 11 strings but its tuning is far closer to that of the Renaissance than to that of the baroque lute; it is not a 'historical' instrument, but in this case what instrument would be appropriate? And, provided that the music was fitly presented, would Bach have cared much? Only the blindest of purists would answer the last question affirmatively. Sollscher's instrument permits him to leave the basses in their proper Read more octaves, without 'compressing' them as 'standard' guitarists must do... He is in truth a musician's musician—forget what instrument he is playing who knows how to impart shape to lines and dynamics to reveal structure and to present the music with dignity, investing it with controlled emotion. His playing is technically immaculate and so too is the recording. As an account of this oeuvre (if it may be so described) this disc is unrivalled.

-- John Duarte, Gramophone [1/1989]
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