Dear all, This year's lute festival took place in Kassel in northern Hassia. The lutenists from switzerland already started their travel on Thursday and arrived well in Kassel. It just took it's time to find the Hotel. One would expect the intercity hotel near the central station but finally my memory started to work correctly and I remembered the intercity station to be somewhere else - close to the castle with the famous "Herkules". The next day we started visiting the castle and the exhibition with several lute pictures. Then we needed to hurry not to miss the first recitals of the festival. The first day took playe at the university. The first of them was by Gabriel Schabor on baroque guitar playing music mainly from Santiago de Murcia. Gabriel played with great technical perfection und incorporating nice effects mainly from a mexican source found in a second hand bookstore. The second recital was one of the highlights of that first day of the festival: Ugo Nastrucci played italian (on lute) and spanish music (on vihuela) of the renaissance. The program itself didn't sound like much as it contained well-known and familiar standards. But Ugos playing is supherb with a delicate sense for voice-leading and the structure of the music. His use of colors, agogic and dynamic is terrific!
Hungry we went to a restaurant nearby and enjoyed the pleasures of turkish cooking and returned back in time to listen to the evening recital which has been recorded by HR2 (the local radio station). Joachim Held played music by J.B.Hagen and S.L.Weiss (on baroque lute). His perfect playing and interpretation recieved great applause. Very bold to start a recital in d-minor (Hagen) and then playing the second piece in A-Major (Weiss)! The second part of the concert was completely in one key (Hagen B-flat Major and Weiss G-Minor). The encore was in e-flat minor - a chiaconne by S.L.Weiss - obviously slightly shortend. Due to the limitations of the public transportation in Kassel we returned to a pub near our hotel havng some beers. After a while we were joined by other visitors of the festival and it bacame a very funny and interesting ending of that first day of the festival. The next day started at noon with visiting the exhibition of instruments and editors. Now at the Murhardsche library. As always many interesting instruments were on exhibition. The instrument which interested me the most was the stundent lute by Renzo Salvador who has had two copies at the exhibition. Really marvelous instruments. Generelly the quality of the instruments by all makers is terrific. Having missed the first talk by Jo Lüdke we nearly missed the lecture of our friend Markus Lutz, too, who told us news about Johann Sigismund Weiss and his music. Being tired we decided to leave and so missed the talk by Frank Legel about Goethe and the lute (couldn't imagine there would be something interesting) and by Michel Cardin about the London manuscript. The evening recitals took place at the museum for sepulkralkultur and started with a recital by Peter Croton accompanying Theresia Bolthe. What a recital! Peter is a fine player with great sense for tone culture and the structure of the music. Starting with a Performance of a bach-Aria with has been embeded between the Prelude and the gigue of the first Cello-Suite perfect playing of the music by Dowland and Campian followed. Theresia read some poems by Rilke which perfectly matched the location (Sepulkralkultur means cult of the dead). The performance ended with a collection of Peters own works. Modern works on the lute do work and Peter's works do have the charme of combining elaborated musical structure with elements of jazz and folk music (I assume his edition is still available from the german lute society). Theresia has a great voice and - seldom heard in such a perfection - adjusted the volume of her clear soprano to fit the volume of the lute. I enjoyed how flexibl! e she interpreted the music coloring her voice depending the actual song - clear when singing Dowland changing to "Folk-Style" when performing Peters works. A very entertaining performance on the highest standard. The evening ended with a performance of the 17-piece "Frankfurter Renaissance Ensemble" with music of the hassian court (by Heugel and Moritz von Hessen), mainly for recorders, viols and singers. A lute player was there but not heard. The final day started at 9:15 in the morning - impossible for us! Although the topics sounded interesting: Michael Freimuth played a commented recital of music from the Harrach-Library and Gerd Dethlefs and Martin Junge played/talked about newly discovered lute music in the family album of Bernard Schenckinck (Münster 1561). So we arrived a little late and just listend to the final two performances: First of them was renaissance music at it's best: The Rozetta Lute Duo from hungria played lute duos from england, italy and from hungria. Highly virtuosic playing using all effects you may imagine on a lute and several others I didn't thought of. If you ever have a chance to listen to them - attend a concert! It's unbelievable! And those without a chance to attend a live performance may get an impression by listening to their CD. http://www.rozettaduo.hu/index_eng.html In the meantime Pantagruel is well known and their fresh performance of renaissance music is very much appreciated by most of us. Having the pleasure to listen and watch their performance the second time (after last years overhelming success at the lute festival in Fuessen) I tried to concentrate on details: Hannah's gesture, the arrangement of the music as well as the stage presence. And I am even impressed even more than last year when I *just* enjoyed their performance. The Choreography even seems to include stereo effects of Domink's and Mark's playing, every position is well thought of, the musical arrangements are clever and - to my surprise - mark plays the complete original lute accompanyment to Dowland's songs with some occational additions done by Dominik providing an additional accent at some points. The duets by Dominik and Mark change between Folk, Gothic and "Jethro Tull"-like playing. Hannah's clear and transparent voice, her stage presence, her toying with ! the audience alone would make a recital by pantagruel well worth to attend but the trio even adds terrific playing, great arrangements and a perfect choreography which results in a professional performance of the highest standard. You may get a tiny impression when watching their videos made at last year's festival in Fuessen (for example http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2011876116) - but actually you should have seen them live! Afterwards we returned back to the lake constance and to switzerland. Cordially Thomas To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
