Jakob_b Leak

The Art in Music – Siggi Loch has had the clear objective to foster creative interaction between jazz and visual art ever since he founded ACT in 1992. As a producer who is also an art collector, he loves to bring not only topflight musicians together around him, but visual artists as well. Works by Philip Taaffe, Gerhard Richter, Martin Noël, Martin Assig and many more don’t just adorn album covers, they are also on display at the ACT Gallery in Berlin.

This is now the third disc I have heard by the master lutenist Jakob Lindberg of the eloquent music of Sylvius Weiss. Weiss sweetly combines elegance and sentiment in a manner that is both intellectually and sensually satisfying. To my ears, Lindberg portrays the music perfectly, the sensitive Sarabande in the Sonata in C as well as the ensuing minuet, the tension of the opening of the Tombeau sur la Mort de M. Comte de Logy as well as the devastatingly sober theme. The Tombeau is an almost 12-minute piece at a tempo that crawls rather than walks, and yet it holds the attention.

In what Et’cetera has described as Volume I, Pavlo Beznosiuk couples three of Westhoff’s suites for solo violin from 1696 with six items from Walther’s scherzos from 1676. His program opens with Walther’s Sonata VIII, offering a startling initial barrage of signature chords and double-stops, giving way to flurries of rapid notes and studded with brilliant staccatos, beside which the demands of Corelli’s solos about a generation later pale, and the Sonata closes with fireworks that make a greater cumulative effect than the works of Locatelli, often identified as the precursor of Paganini’s technical demands.

In 1991 lutenist Jakob Lindberg bought a very special instrument – one of the rare extant lutes by Sixtus Rauwolf, built c. 1590. The restoration of the lute took several years and was rather painstaking: for some repairs they even used ancient wood from the library in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. Considering the great age of the instrument it was nevertheless in good shape and is now probably the only one in the world that, retaining its original soundboard, is in playable condition.

Jakob Lindberg was born in Sweden and developed his first passionate interest in music through the Beatles. After studying music at Stockholm University he came to London to study at the Royal College of Music. Under the guidance of Diana Poulton he decided towards the end of his studies to focus on Renaissance and baroque music.

Jan Antonín Losy was born around 1650 of a prosperous Bohemian family. After the death of his father, the first Count of Losinthal, he inherited not only his title but also considerable wealth. He was therefore able to devote his life to music, and his skill as a lutenist became famous throughout Europe. Unlike professional players, Losy had no need to sell or publish his music but fortunately it has survived in numerous manuscript copies. Today we have almost 200 pieces by Count Losy, many of which once belonged together in larger suites or partitas.

On Remembering, the Danish cellist Jakob Kullberg continues his collaborations with two of the foremost Nordic composers: Per Nørgård and Kaija Saariaho. Praised internationally for his performances of the modern cello concerto, Kullberg regards the concerto form as the encounter of an individual soloist with the sound world of a composer. With living composers this approach often results in an unusual degree of collaboration, as the works gathered here bear witness to. Since 1999, Kullberg has enjoyed a close and unique partnership with Nørgård which has resulted in a large number of works.