 Bach aurait composé ces œuvres pour de célèbres luthistes comme Weiss et Kropffgans qui jouaient souvent chez le compositeur à Eisenach vers 1730. Malgré d’indéniables difficultés techniques liées à la transcription, elles se prêtent de manière convaincante à la guitare. Une des difficultés majeures de ces pages naît de la complexité extrême du discours musical d’une immense richesse harmonique dans son architecture et son articulation, imposant un équilibre total entre la rythmique et la dynamique, le doigté et l’intonation. De fait, elles représentent pour tout guitariste le marqueur essentiel qui sanctionne la maturité de l’interprète. Nombre de guitaristes célèbres se sont lancés dans cette aventure ô combien risquée. De multiples enregistrements se sont succédés et d’aussi talentueux solistes comme John Williams ou Frédéric Zigante n’ont pas convaincu, alors qu’Andrès Ségovia, incomparable, puis Julian Bream, flamboyant, ont marqué durablement la discographie. Le guitariste allemand Johannes Monno s’avance donc sur un terrain très visité et semé d’embûches. Mais en artiste accompli, Monno enchante par sa musicalité aérienne, son expression sonore lumineuse, la tenue exemplaire de la ligne mélodique dans une sérénité et une maîtrise absolue de son art. Une interprétation bouleversante qui s’affirme, avec ce double CD, comme une nouvelle version de référence. (Philippe Zanoly) The lute was a very popular instrument in Bach’s day. The various types of lute had for centuries been influential in shaping the development of music. Certain musical terms are in fact directly derived from lute-playing technique, including the expression style brisé, coined by Couperin to denote lute-like arpeggiated chords on the harpsichord. During the first half of the 18th century, Sylvius Leopold Weiss was particularly renowned and respected for his consummate mastery of the lute. In his treatise of 1727 on the theory and practice of playing the lute, Ernst Gottlieb Baron writes: “He has been the first to show that more could be done on the lute than was hitherto thought possible. As regards his skill, I can sincerely testify that it makes no difference whether one hears an ingenious organist performing his fantasias and fugues on a harpsichord or hears Monsieur Weiss playing. In arpeggios he has an extraordinary full-voiced texture; in expressing emotions he is incomparable; he has stupendous technique and an unheard-of delicacy and cantabile charm. He is a great improviser, who can play extemporaneously...” [Details of German-language works quoted in this text will be found in the footnotes to the German introduction. – Translators’ note] Reporting on a meeting between S.L. Weiss and J.S. Bach in 1739, Johann Elias Bach wrote the following in a letter to his pupil Johann Wilhelm Koch: “...we heard some very fine music when my cousin from Dresden, who came to stay for four weeks, gave several performances in our house together with the two famous lute-players Herr Weiss and Herr Kropfgans.” This musical acquaintance is likely to have begun much earlier, namely during J.S. Bach’s time in Cöthen. Up until this point it was customary for lute music to be composed only by lutenists – too great were the difficulties in coming to grips with the instrument’s tuning, its illogical limitations on polyphonic part-writing and its unique form of notation, known as tablature.
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