Rolf Lislevand DIMINUITO

Rolf Lislevand lutes, vihuela de mano; Linn Andrea Fuglseth voice; Anna Maria Friman voice; Giovanna Pessi tripleharp; Marco Ambrosini nyckelharpa; Thor Harald Johnsen chitarra battente, vihuela de mano, lutes; Michael Behringer clavichord, organ; Bjørn Kjellemyr colascione; David Mayoral percussion.

 On “Nuove Musiche”, his highly successful ECM debut released in spring 2006, Norwegian master lutenist led his own group of international early music virtuosi. The album presented ravishing and most unorthodox accounts of mostly Italian instrumental music from the early Baroque. Based on Italian Renaissance sources from the 16th century – madrigals, chansons and virtuoso lute music – the new programme goes even further back – from the “seconda pratica” of monophonic expressiveness to the “prima pratica” of polyphonic complexity.

Once again putting a strong emphasis on improvisation, Lislevand and his colleagues disclose the astounding modernity and emotional wealth in the music of composers such as Giovanni Antonio Terzi or Joan Ambrosio Dalza. Most of the music stems from the Veneto region of Italy where, at that period, strong influences of oriental and eastern music could be felt. Lislevand’s group translates this with a lush scoring for deep instruments, both stringed and plucked. The album title “Diminuito” refers to the praxis of virtuosic ornamentation of vocal lines, the “diminution” of larger rhythmic and harmonic units in most agile runs, scales and arpeggi. The album was recorded in St. Gerold with line-up including the delightful sopranos of Anna Maria Friman and Linn Andrea Fuglesth. (ECM Records)

Rolf Lislevand NUOVE MUSICHE

Is it fair for baroque to sound so sensual? An elegiac soprano voice wafts above an instrumental piece by Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger. Flamenco rhythms underpin a passacaglia. Then suddenly we hear the typical harmonies and ornaments of Celtic folk music. Is that how this music really sounded in Italy in the early 1600s? Of course not. But what the Norwegian lutenist and guitarist Rolf Lislevand and his six colleagues bring off on Nuove musiche, their début album for ECM, has all the earmarks of a manifesto. Their vibrant and literally unheard-of readings of early baroque music from Italy are meant to grab the listener directly, as if it really were 'new music'.
'For years people tried to play early music as closely as possible to the way it was played at its time of origin', Lislevand explains 'But that's a philosophical self-contradiction. The first question is whether it's possible at all to replicate the performance of a musician who lived centuries ago. As far as I'm concerned, reconstruction is not really interesting at all. Do we really want to act as if we hadn't heard any music between 1600 and the present day? I think that would be dishonest. With this recording we say goodbye once and for all to early music's authenticity creed.'
This doesn't mean that anything goes - on the contrary. Lislevand, who learned his craft at the famous Schola Cantorum in Basle, has been professor of lute and historical performance practice at Trossingen Musikhochschule since 1993. He has turned out many prize-winning recordings, some of them with his Kapsberger Ensemble, which forms the core of the musicians on Nuove Musiche. He avidly scrutinises every available scrap of information on what he plays and how to play it properly. But those are only the preconditions for a convincing performance. After all, one vital element in baroque music was improvisation: 'Pieces were played to meet the needs of the moment', Professor Lislevand points out. 'To play strictly according to the notes on the page would be tantamount to lying, for the scores were written in a sort of shorthand. They presuppose a good deal of knowledge and self-assurance from the player.'
Take the percussion instruments, for instance. We know they were used, but nobody around 1600 bothered to write down the parts. So we have no way of knowing for sure how they were used. Did they only serve as timekeepers, or was their timbre exploited as well? Lislevand has very strong views on the subject: 'The idea that it wasn't until today that we could freely express our feelings is not only naive but arrogant. Personally I believe that the people of the 17th century were much richer and more self-aware than we assume today.' It is only natural, then, that the percussionist Pedro Estevan offers a huge range of expressive sounds and rhythms on Nuove musiche.
Lislevand searches for points of contact between the 400-year-old pieces on this recording (by Kapsberger, Pellegrini, Piccinini and others) and the musical horizons of today's performers. Usually the starting point is the passacaglia, a set of increasingly dramatic variations on an unchanging bass pattern. Passacaglias formed the core repertoire of the lute and guitar books of the 17th century. 'They thrive on chromaticism, harsh dissonances and offbeat rhythms. If the composers tried to get these effects, then we have every right to go even further. My idea is simply to develop and elaborate things already there in the material. Arianna Savall's melody really does come from the Kapsberger toccata itself. Everything there that smacks of echoes from current popular music is already contained in the pieces. I just coax it out.' (ECM Records)