Sonatas & Partitas ; Suites (Hopkinson Smith) (2014)

"Hopkinson Smith makes such a good case for Bach's Sonatas and Partitas on the lute that his recording is arguably the best you can buy of these works - on any instrument. Bach's student Johann Friedrich Reichardt wrote that Bach often played the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin on the clavichord, fleshing out their essentially skeletal textures, though if he ever wrote any of this down it has not survived. Hopkinson Smith is the supreme 'poet' of the lute, and it is without hesitation that I count this recording as, for me, the finest I have heard of these works, on any instrument. The natural resonances of the lute assist the continuity of the lines and the recording itself preserves them without turning them into 'sonic soup'. If you fail to share my experience the loss will be yours!" (gramophone.co.uk)

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