Hasse, J.A.: Opera Arias Transcribed for Lute

Album review

Johann Adolf Hasse was a German-born composer who dominated Italian opera around the middle of the eighteenth century. He was known to Italians as "il caro Sassone" -- the dear Saxon -- and then made a triumphant return to the glittering court at Dresden. His expansive operatic arias might not seem to be promising sources for lute music, but the arrangements heard here date from Hasse's time and might even have been made working from live performances: the manuscripts include notations indicating the names of singers. They're big, complicated pieces that capture a startling amount of inner-voice detail, and they work precisely because of the density of Hasse's music: there's always something happening underneath the tune, and hearing operatic music this way makes clear how much. German lutenist Axel Wolf's 13-course instrument is capable of the acrobatics that make this music work. A good place to start sampling is the "Sinfonia" from the opera Solimano (track 3), which shows how the lute can evoke even big orchestral effects. Although nothing on the album is sung, the booklet gives a good overview of Hasse's operatic work, including such fascinating tidbits as the fact that the production of the opera Ezio in Dresden in 1755 involved 120 live animals. The only negative is the sound; no recording location is given, but the Oehms engineering staff opted for an unpleasantly live, resonant space that lets you hear every bit of non-tonal noise the lute produces. An audience in a crowded, sumptuously furnished eighteenth century drawing room would not have heard the lute in anything like this way. Lute arrangements of music by a composer who is himself still not much known (however unfair that may be) to the general public may have a limited appeal, but the music at the very least furnishes a nice change of pace from the small-scale lute music of the Renaissance. An offbeat find.
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