Output details

CD recordings of virtuoso 18th-century guitar music

This recording aims to recreate the sound of Rudolph Straube’s Sonata for Guitar and Harpsichord of 1768 as closely as possible, documenting the reconstruction of a lost performance tradition. The CD is the world premiere recording of this English guitar repertoire, documenting the sound of the contemporary English guitar and harpsichord duo.

Straube was a pupil of J. S. Bach who moved to London in 1758 where he became a recognised English guitar virtuoso. The CD rediscovers a performance tradition possibly still extant in the 19th century but lost in the 20th. The combination of English guitar and harpsichord poses problems of balance which had to be overcome to create a convincing performance.

Two contemporary original instruments were located, both of which have survived in excellent playing order: English guitar, Preston, c. 1770; and harpsichord, Kirckman, 1766, with both a swelling device and a foot-operated machine stop to change registers during performance. These revealed an unexpectedly wide range of colours and dynamics in performance and the results of these experiments in timbre have been captured in the recording.

As performers, we were reliant upon the quality of our sources, the sound of our original instruments and our intuition as experienced practitioners. The registration devices of the Kirckman harpsichord in combination with the English guitar offered colours, dynamic levels and sonorities which could not have been foreseen before the project began.

Deux-Elles CDs are distributed internationally and selections from the recording have been broadcast on Radio in the UK and abroad. It has an extremely high impact not only amongst the specialist audiences, but also with those more broadly interested in guitar recordings and with the general listening public.