Daniel Lippel, Johann Sebastian Bach, aufs Lautenwerk, The Well-Tempered Guitar

 

As one grows older, if one has taken advantage of the availability of the music of Bach over the years, Bach speaks to the listening self with ever more clarity and movement, so that at least for me Bach takes a central place often enough among various musical  things and so I gain ever more from the hearing.

So today there is a recent volume of Bach that speaks volumes to me--namely Daniel Lippel's The Well Tempered Guitar, aufs Lautenwerk (New Focus Recordings FCR 920 MF18). It is, as the subtitle suggests, music Bach intended for the lute. Adapting it to the guitar involves foremost a guitar-centered aural sense, a sensitivity to making the glorious music sound anew. Daniel does just that.

If you are like me some of this music will be very familiar--through hearing guitar or lute versions or even arrangements for other instruments. Others might seem somewhat less familiar, to me anyway. All is welcome, deeply satisfying on multiple listens. So we get the five movement Suite in Em BWV 996, the four movement Sonata in Cm BWV 997 and the three movement Prelude, Fuga & Allegro in Eb BWV 998.

Daniel Lippel gives us a kind of whole cloth reading of the music, with equal weight given to each part in counterpoint and/or stretching into aural space. The line weaving is smoothly phrased so we can take it all in as the unity it was intended to be. There's not a lot of rubato and as you listen it seems quite right, quite as it no doubt sounded to Bach as he conceived it.

This is extraordinarily deep music in the end, extraordinarily phased and sounded by Maestro Lippel. Very recommended.