At 07:46 AM 4/10/2007, Daniel Shoskes wrote: >Interesting new CD from Naxos with a Baroque lute / Mandolin pairing: > >http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.557716 > >Nice to hear the d minor Weiss duet recorded. I'm working on that piece >now with Kenneth Be using Charlie's reconstruction, which I don't think >has ever been recorded yet (it's the one duet missing from Barto's Weiss >duet CD).
Of the D-minor duet, Michel Cardin tweaked the Hadidians flute setting for vol. 12 of his London manuscript series. It's fun to aurally compare the Ahlert reconstruction (which I find quite nice) to the other (which is also quite nice). >I don't have access to the liner notes online. Is there any historical >precedent for a lute/mandolin pairing in the Baroque? I picked my copy up on the 1st. I also own Ahlert & Schwab's other recordings on modern or early 20th-c. instruments. If you'd really like, I can transcribe the liner notes of this new one when home from the office tonight. I don't believe it's written in the liner notes, but the melody line is Daniel's own reconstruction. Daniel plays a 6-course mandolino by Sebastian Nunez patterned after an 18th-c. original by Maraffi. Ahlert & Schwab's approach here is nicely and conservatively phrased, perfectly clean, quite "Germanic." I really like this effort, but I don't think it makes an attempt at HIP beyond the selection of reproduction oldish instruments. Last I knew, Daniel always plays mandolino with a quill. You can find a little more here: <http://www.ahlert-schwab.de/eng/index.php?cSID=071aa85ec5d16769bea674e071a900c5&ELEMENT=cd_weiss> Another composer who worked at Dresden was Carlo Arrigoni, who wrote at least two good quality sonatas and a concerto for mandolino. Johann Adolph Hasse, also in Dresden, wrote a lovely concerto for mandolino. ...Even Handel used it in the oratorio Alexander Balus. Weiss likely had encountered the instrument at some time or another. Even a little more quirky to me than the use of 6-course mandolino in Weiss is the selection of archlute for the continuo line (in spite of late-baroque precedents) in the Hoffman, a very solidly rococo composer who (if I recall correctly, removed from appropriate references in the day-job office) worked in Vienna around 1800. Of the Hoffman sonatas, I'm particularly fond of Duilio Galfetti's (of Il Giardino Armonico fame) recording accompanied by fortepiano (I don't recall the keyboard player's name here from the day-job office). For those who aren't familiar (and those who are, please forgive me), this breed of "mandolin" is much more lute like than the Neapolitan type: likely was played with the fingers in the baroque era, strung in gut tied directly to a fixed bridge, and tuned wholly or mostly in fourths: typically [g-g], b-b, e'-e', a'-a', d"-d", g"-g". Best, Eugene -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
