Hopkinson Smith: Mad Dog

Description

Naive are delighted to present a new fascinating journey into the heart of the Elizabethan Age. This anthology contains four pieces connected with John Dowland and others by the generation of lute composers that preceded him. Lute virtuoso Hopkinson Smith named the piece 'Mad Dog', as a symbol of his creative process: 'There are many orphaned lute pieces in English sources that have come down to us with no name at all. I have taken the liberty of christening four such pieces in this programme with names that seem to suit their musical spirits. As we grow into a repertoire and ingest its language and freedoms, a process of entering the creativity of an age gradually takes place. A fluency develops that leads to many types of extemporisation. The naming of unnamed pieces can be seen as a natural extension of this.' Hopkinson Smith has been praised as one of the masters of repertoire for early plucked instruments and has produced over 25 prize-winning recordings for naïve including his lute arrangements of the Bach solo violin 'Sonatas and Partitas', released in the year 2000, which was called by Gramophone 'the best recording of these works on any instrument'.