Ecm Records
2006
Nuove Musiche
About This Album
Rolf Lislevand is a lutenist and guitarist; a professor of lute and historical performance practice in Trossingen, Germany. The reason for mentioning the academic credentials is because Nuove Musiche is anything but an "academic" recording. Quite the contrary. on this offering, Lislevand (a former member of Jordi Savall's Hyperion XX), and his septet "say goodbye once and for all to the authenticity creed." They know the rules, they understand the music inside and out, and they refuse to believe that the only way to perform it is the way it was supposedly heard nearly half-a-century ago. The rules are not broken so much as they are extrapolated upon by the often sketchy nature of the original scores. Lislevand believes that to try to perfectly replicate a performance from centuries ago is boring and perhaps a conceit -- because this approach tries to erase all that we have learned about music from hearing it in the interim between then and now. His opinion would mean nothing if the music found here wasn't so utterly seductive, compelling, and quietly moving, and he and his band didn't perform with such authority, elegance, grace, and adventure. To think that it's possible to make something from Baroque era sound so contemporary without pillaging the original music, to take it out of the academy and the institution and bring it to the level of the modern sensibility without selling out the composer is a small marvel.
Track List (try tracks 1,3,11 and 16)

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