Danses pour théorbe

D'Oz is certainly pushing the boat out with their new cover designs. The one-cover-fits-all approach of a few years ago seems to have gone for good. These new covers are very eye-catching. There are 13 pieces here, six by Kapsberger and seven by Piccinini. Johannes Hieronymous Kapsberger to give him his Sunday name (and what a great name it is too!) and Alessandro Piccinini were both writing for this offshoot of the Lute during the first decades of the 17th century. There music was often so idiomatic for its particular arrangement of strings that music usually suffers when moved onto the guitar, just in the same way as Baroque lute music often does when placed on the guitar, for example the works of Weiss. One way to try to approach the problem of the different tunings, especially when comparing the intervals between the strings, is to retune the guitar somewhat. Therefore our two arrangers here have done precisely that by making some pieces have a 1st and 6th string tuned to D, and often including a 2nd string tuned to Bb. l don't know how you, the readers, feel about the lst and 2nd strings being thus retuned but it gave me more than a few headaches trying to negotiate the music as a result. Nevertheless when looking at the music itself it is no doubt attractive Kapsberger's little bunch include a tiny Canario, a large Bergamasca, and a self-named piece called Kapsberger, while Piccinini's set includes a Partite Variate Sopra La Follia, an Aria Di Fiorenza, and three Corrente, all of a certain musical stature that is hard to deny. Therefore to summarise, l found the set contained somme wonderful music but didn't like the move to a six-stringed instrument very much. Knowing that many of you feel entirely the opposite about such arrangements l can say that the music and the arrangements are rarely ever going to sound better on the guitar than the version you find here, which as usual is very nicely presented. Chris Dumigan (Classical Guitar Magazine)