Dear all,
It is with great joy and excitement that I am pleased to announce that my new solo album is now available on iTunes, Amazon (download) and CDBaby (download and physical CDs at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/christopherwilke1) as well as numerous other digital sites. Entitled "Graceful Degradation," the album is dedicated to music by the last generation of lute composers, who left some of the most expressive pieces ever written for the instrument just before the dawn of the 19^th century. Including works by J.A. Hasse, J.F. Kleinknecht, C.P. Durant, F.J. Haydn and an Anonymous sonata from the Rosani Lute Book, these wryly melodic works are by turns charming, witty, angry and melancholy. As was expected at the time, I have added my own cadenzas in several movements. A special emphasis has been placed on pieces embracing the highly expressive, proto-RomanticEmpfindsamer Stil. Some of the works are period transcriptions of pieces intended for other instruments, demonstrating that the lute was very much involved with broader musical currents to the very end. This is valuable music that is rarely heard (the majority of the works are here recorded for the first time). I hope this project may broaden understanding of this important niche in our repertoire. Since this message goes to the lute list, I will also mention that this project has been a particularly personal and involved one for me. After having recorded a substantial portion, it became evident to me that the usual modern baroque lute right hand technique was neither entirely historically accurate nor adequate to the task of presenting this particular repertoire as it needed to be. I set the work aside and, over the course of three years, I subsequently dismantled and rebuilt my entire right hand technique so that I could present the detailed minutia of dynamic nuance, shadings of timbre, articulations, phrase structure and tempo control that period sources and the music itself demand. Returning to the project, I discovered that my previously recorded efforts, though acceptable, simply didn't do proper artistic justice to the core spirit of the pieces. It was only with the generous support of backers on Kickstarter.com (including several from this list) that I was able to muster up the courage to discard so much already completed work and finalize the project in the manner it needed to be. Thank you, Chris P.S. Liner notes are available at the bottom of the page at CDBaby.com Dr. Christopher Wilke D.M.A. Eastman School of Music Lutenist, Guitarist and Composer www.christopherwilke.com -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
