Silvius Leopold Weiss (1687-1750) is now spinning here, as he often is, firstly because baroque music is a serious interest of mine, secondly because plucked instruments of all kinds are at least as serious an interest, and thirdly because his lute music (which, in case anyone doesn't know, he wrote more of than anyone else) is easily on a level with Bach's keyboard suites, with which it has much in common stylistically, allowing for the fact that his bass lines are necessarily less mobile than Bach's are. (Bach and Weiss seem to have known each other well). Robert Barto's complete recording on Naxos has reached volume 8 (out of something like 30, I would expect) and every volume contains more than a few gems, though Barto doesn't quite get to the darkest depths of the music as does Hopkinson Smith on his two CDs for Naive. Very well worth seeking out also is a disc on Stradivarius of four sonatas for two lutes played by Barto and Karl-Ernst Schröder. Only one of the parts of these pieces survives, but, assuming that Weiss intended the musical material to be shared equally between the two instruments, it's possible to reconstruct the second part with considerable confidence. A disc of chamber concertos on Chandos, similarly reconstructed from the (solo) lute part, is pleasant enough but much less convincing, since I the ritornello material would have to have been recomposed basically from scratch.

Anyway, just thought I'd flag that up for anyone who's interested.

Richard,

I case you haven't seen it, Weiss is the featured composer in the current edition of Goldberg magazine.  The article isn't on their website yet but it should appear before too long.

Oh; thanks for that suggestion; I'm a biggish fan of guitar and (though to a much greater ignorance) lute music, so.