https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0081-711X
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Fabrice Fitch, Frescobaldi and friends, Early Music, Volume 52, Issue 1, February 2024, Pages 130–131, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caae004
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The spirit of Frescobaldi hovers over this selection of recordings, all but one for solo instruments. On Virtù e nobiltà (Metronome, metcd 1093, issued 2019), lutenist Fred Jacobs focuses on Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger’s fourth and final publication dedicated to the theorbo (Rome, 1640). He sensibly groups his selection into sets or suites, most of which include a prelude, a toccata and a dance movement. There have been bolder takes on Kapsberger’s art; Rolf Lislevand springs to mind (both before and after founding his Ensemble Kapsberger, but especially in his 1993 recording for Auvidis, which draws on the same print), but he typically projects the great theorbist’s music onto a big screen, with several players in support (as does Christina Pluhar, but yet more so), whereas Jacobs is on his own. This fits the information that Kapsberger did not perform as a continuo player but appeared as a soloist in the tradition of the aristocratic amateur. All the same, the music surely accommodates a little more swagger in the dances and abandon in the virtuoso runs. But Jacobs shows that the terrific Capona doesn’t need Lislevand’s bells and whistles (or drums) to swing; I particularly enjoyed the final set, which includes some snaky chromaticism in the eighth Gagliarda—just the kind of place where one could imagine the rhythms imitating the pitches’ wayward course. That said, recordings of Kapsberger played straight are rarer than one might think, and Jacobs’s fastidious approach does more than fill a gap in the market.
