Jakob Lindberg

Jakob Lindberg – Note d’oro (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:22:15 minutes | 3,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS

Jan Antonín Losy was born around 1650 of a prosperous Bohemian family. After the death of his father, the first Count of Losinthal, he inherited not only his title but also considerable wealth. He was therefore able to devote his life to music, and his skill as a lutenist became famous throughout Europe. Unlike professional players, Losy had no need to sell or publish his music but fortunately it has survived in numerous manuscript copies. Today we have almost 200 pieces by Count Losy, many of which once belonged together in larger suites or partitas. As a composer, Losy followed the example of French masters such as François Dufaut, but to this he brought a gift for Italianate melody, particularly in the many surviving arias, rondeaux and minuets. For this amply filled tribute to Losy, Jakob Lindberg has selected 36 pieces, grouping them into six suites. He performs them on his 16th-century lute by the German builder Sixtus Rauwolf – an instrument which in 1715 was given a new neck and updated” into an 11-course lute, the most important type of lute during Losy’s lifetime.
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Jakob Lindberg – Nocturnal (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:23:17 minutes | 2,91 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS

This is a bouquet of works for lute by Elizabethan and Jacobean composers, in the expert hands of Jakob Lindberg; the more famous are by Dowland, Byrd and Holborne, and the rarer works are by John Johnson, Daniel Bacheler and Edward Collard, without forgetting the most prolific writer of all time, “Anonymous”. And so the track-list is already original enough; but Lindberg’s big idea is to perform, as the central pivot of the album Nocturnal by Benjamin Britten, written in 1963 for the guitarist Julian Bream, but on the lute. With the authorisation of the Britten Foundation, of course, and making use of the composer’s preparatory manuscripts; and given how much Britten loved the lute, we can easily imagine how much he would have applauded this translation from guitar to lute. And it is true that the more velvety, less brilliant, sound of the lute offers a new reading of the work, underlining both its modern and deliberately archaic sides. And so it is an excellent idea to juxtapose the 16th and 17th centuries with the 20th, given that Britten has already provided us such a beautiful bridge between them.
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Jakob Lindberg – Bach on the Rauwolf Lute (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:27:57 minutes | 1,60 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS

Bach was renowned as a keyboard player as well as being an accomplished violinist, but as far as we know he didn’t play the lute. He seems to have been fascinated by the instrument’s special sound qualities, however, and was clearly inspired by the possibilities of the “Lautenwerk”. This was a gut-strung harpsichord designed to imitate the sound of the lute and at least some of the works usually referred to as “the Bach Lute Suites” were probably composed for this instrument.
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Jakob Lindberg – A Lute by Sixtus Rauwolf: French & German Baroque Music (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:50 minutes | 1,48 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS

The lute by Sixtus Rauwolf heard on this recording was probably built in the last decade of the sixteenth century. Some hundred years later, in 1715, it was converted to suit the musical tastes and demands of the baroque period. For this disc, Jakob Lindberg has chosen works that could have formed part of the repertory of the presumably German owner of the instrument at around the time of its final conversion.

For German lutenists from about the middle of the seventeenth century, it was France that provided the aesthetic and musical model, and towards the end of the century, when the lute rather suddenly and inexplicably dropped out of fashion in Paris certain French luthistes travelled abroad and met with great success in German-speaking lands. With them, they took their music and special traditions of lute-playing, evidence of which can be seen in the music of several of the German composers included here.

The album closes with a suite of pieces by Silvius Leopold Weiss, the most famous lutenist of the baroque era. Weiss, Lindberg and the Rauwolf lute first crossed paths in 2006 on a highly acclaimed all-Weiss disc (BIS-1524): ‘Too good to be true’ was the verdict in International Record Review while the reviewer in Goldberg Magazine wrote ‘As an evocation of the lute’s magical qualities, this deserves to achieve cult status.’
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