CD booklet notes Wenzel Ludwig Edler von Radolt's collection of lute music entitled, To my most true and confiding friend, inclined both to the merry and to the sad humours, herewith in the company of other faithful vassals of our innermost sensibility' was printed in 1701 in Vienna by J(oh)ann Michael Nestler and bears a dedication to the then, Roman King Josef I. Radolt was of Austro-ltalian aristocratic descent. He was born in Vienna on the 18th of December 1667, son of Franz Clement Galeazzo, Freiherr Radolt, and of Maria Polixena, Freiin von Schwarzenhorn. He died in the same town on the 10th of March, 1716. According to his own account, he spent his life "so allured by the beguiling countenance of most pleasurabte music, as to dedicate the course of my life to her", The 'Most true and confiding friend is the only work of Radolt that survives today. In the instructive preface, he refers to Francois Dufault - as did many lutenists of his time -: a lutenist of French descent who, as Tim Crawford has recently established, travelled extensively throughout the European capitals around the turn of the 18* century. Unusual in the part books are Radolt's meticulous fingerings for the right hand (!) that give us a precise insight into the style of lute playing current in the imperial city of the period. This extensive collection of 12 so-called 'Concerti' contains much that is remarkable about the Viennese Lute Concerto - a popular genre of the day comprising violins, lute and bass. The variety of scoring is striking: from four-part string writing with three obligato lutes of various sizes, to the relatively intimate combination of single violin, obligate viola da gamba (viol), lute and bass, in another concerto (no. 6} the composer suggests the addition of a wind instrument. Even at a cursory glance the collection's unusual variety of forms and styles is evident: from the large scale overture-suite, through fashionable dances, quoting French galanteries, to Italian forms such as toccata, capriccio and symphonia, we find ourselves covering a broad terrain of contrasting musical characters, most clearly evident in the variety of instrumental textures. Only does a second look reveal the artfully contrived contrapuntal language within individual movements - writing of a kind one would hardly expect to come across in a compilation of suites from this time. The collection appears both in the year 1714 in the catalogue of Johann Michael Christophori and again in the year 1732 in the Wiener Diarum'. We can assume that these repeated appearances were not merely for archival purposes, and may deduce that the collection enjoyed a certain renown. It is all the more remarkable that so little attention has been payed to this collection, either by musicology (incomplete excerpts were edited in 1960) or within the circles of historically informed performance practise. The codex represents the most extensive source of a neglected genre, that once enjoyed great popularity in the German speaking countries - including composers such as Esajas Reussner. The extent of the collection makes a complete recording on one CD impossible. We have thus attempted to present a cross section of the source that is as representative as possible. Owing to the constantly varying instrumentation employed, a colourful picture of ensemble lute music about the imperial Viennese court at the turn of the 17* century emerges of its own accord. The first concerto in d minor employs the largest ensemble that the composer calls for: 3 lutes, in three different tunings, 2 violins, descant viol and bass. It is written in the form of the overture-suite - popular in the latter part of the 17* century in Austria. After a tri-partite overture with a quick fugato central section, we encounter the succession of dances typical since J. J. Frohberger: allemande, courante and sarabande, complemented by a number of fashionable dances of the time. The works closes with a retirada, also an Austrian speciality, known from works of H, Schmelzer and H. I. F. Biber. We meet the same type of dance in the Concerto XII in c minor, coloured here by the particular timbre of the viola da gamba (viol), an instrument that, alongside the lute, was much loved by Viennese aristocracy. The Concerto VI in F major wears a more 'modern' garb, in the form of allamode movements such as an 'aria patorale', or a ,querelle des amantes'. In the second part the composer demonstrates the contrapuntal finesse of which he boasts in his preface. The first minuet and capricio are composed as canons, and demonstrate a curiosity of the collection that becomes further apparent in other concertos: Concerto VIII in C major shows us a whole suite of dances composed above an ostinato aria. The solo violin performs a set of variations over a repeated harmonic and melodic frame, provided in our recording by lute and traverse flute: a witness to the baroque love of varied repetition, here artistically played out within a metric framework. Radolt goes one step further in the Concerto IX in G major, where he combines a gigue with an allemande, a minuet with a courante, and an aria with a sarabande. These finely chiseled rhythmic constructions are realised on this CD in such a way as to emphasise the contrasting style of each of the combined dances: played here by the violin, lute and violone, and as a lute duet with a Colascione (another Austrian/South German speciality) on the bass part. Italian influence can be clearly felt in the free formal juxtapositions of the toccata - the legacy of Frescobaldi, nurtured in Vienna by J. C. Kerll and Georg Muffat. This same influence is evident in the wonderful Symphonia in G minor, that has all the cantabile grace and tender melancholy, for which the lute was so highly valued in the 17th and 18th centuries: characteristics, however, that were soon to lead to its decline. Hubert Hoffmann Reflexions from the concert platform With Ars Antiqua Austria we are constantly on the look out for new music, in recant years we have premiered countless works, turning them into sound again after centuries of slumbering on dusty shelves. In the process, something new has been created: New Music brought to life through the interpretation of enthusiastic musicians. Music that was composed yesterday is new only if it is felt to be so by the musicians at the moment of its interpretation. Even brand-new music may see the light of day as something old, if the fresh, creative and alert spirit of interpretation is missing. So we see ourselves as interpreters of New Music, even if we find ourselves placed within the niche of the 'Old'. The Radolt project was, however, even for our Ensemble something quite special. Some years ago, Hubert Hoffmann drew our attention to this particular collection of Viennese lute concertos. For years he had been trying to bring together the scattered part-books and now had located all except the first violin part. But this one missing link just couldn't be located anywhere. We played from the parts he had collected and were thrilled. So the search for the missing part continued with combined forces. Two years of enquiries to libraries the length and breadth of Europe did not bring us a single step further. But we did possess a clue Before the war, one of the concertos had been published with complete instrumentation in the Denkmaeler Oesterreichischer Tonkunst: at least at this time the missing part-book obviously still existed. Hubert decided to reconstruct the missing part for the whole collection, stylistically basing his solution upon this single concerto, A year later he had almost finished. Then came a telephone call: the missing part-book had been found after all. An inevitable feeling of frustration was soon displaced by the joy of this invaluable discovery. At last we could perform this incredible music! We simply had to put together a score and then we could begin. The instrumentation of the Viennese Lute Concerto was virgin territory to me and to the other musicians of the Ensemble. Since when had we played alongside baroque lutes? After all, they were solo instalments, quiet, tender and filigrane. For continue playing there exist correspondingly larger and more resonant members of the lute family. We realised that we were going to have to develop a special type of tone for the stringed instruments. Our efforts were rewarded by the experience of the very particular world of sound that this aristocratic family of instruments produces. Even today, after countless days of rehearsals, a week of recording and several concerts I am still enthralled by the glugging, noisily tactile, lively and incredibly resonant sounds of this fat-bellied society of instruments. Through the use of unequal tempered tuning their richness of sound was intensified further. Where else do you hear such contented sounds as in the first partita? On the other side of the spectrum, the closing suite in c minor, through the sharpening of intonation within the tuning system, seems to me to be one of the saddest pieces I have ever played. May this New Music enthral many people, and bring the strings of their souls into sympathetic vibration! Gunar Letzbor --
To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
