Transcriptions are a tricky thing, because they always change something fundamental about a piece of music — texture, colour, dynamics, perhaps all three. Hopkinson Smith, the dean of current lute players, has released a new album of the first three of J.S. Bach’s Cello Suites, making for a new listening experience.
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The release on the French Naïve label comes with a reissue of the last three Suites, which he recorded 20 years ago.
A cellist has to be incredibly resourceful with her four strings and bow. Making the music work isn’t just a question of learning the notes, but of figuring out how to suggest Bach’s harmony and counterpoint without the benefit of an extra arm. The player learns how to “throw” certain notes outward, suspending the sound in the air as a sort of ghostly duet.
This is moot for a lutenist, who has the dexterity of five fingers to play the bass support and counterpoint that Bach hints at. Smith’s baroque-era evolution of the lute has four times the number of strings as a cello — and some strings are there to resonate only, adding even more richness to the sound.
The attack — the first contact between person and string and the resulting noise — is also completely different. Even the gentlest pluck contains a precision that a player can’t imitate by gliding rosined horsehair over a string.
That has the potential to make the lute version sound awfully busy. But Smith’s magic is to actually manage the opposite. There is a beguiling ease to his sound. It’s all a lie of course; the result is serene, like a Canada goose floating across a pond, paddling furiously yet invisibly beneath.
Smith has been working on this project his entire life, having begun with the fifth Suite, for which we have a lute transcription in Bach’s own hand (and which is virtually unplayable because Bach didn’t know the instrument well). This document gave Smith the means to realise a workable score for No. 5, and to extrapolate his lessons for all the other Bach transcriptions he has created and performed over his remarkable career.
Is getting the full harmonic bandwidth implied by Bach’s writing worth the change from cello to lute? I’m still not a believer. But this is a great opportunity to hear some of Bach’s iconic pieces in a completely different, yet still historically informed way.
For all the details on this album, including audio, click here.
Here is Smith with a transcription of the Prelude from the Partita No. 3 for solo violin:
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To get the full effect of different sounds and interpretations, here are three versions of the Prelude from Suite No. 1 for cello. The first is the late Janos Starker on a modern cello. The second is Paolo Pandolfo on a viola-da-gamba (transposed to suit the instrument). The third is by Andres Segovia on modern guitar:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
