1985 was a big year for birth tricentenaries but what of 1986? Well, there were two, both of which you might be forgiven for having missed: Benedetto Marcello and Silvius Leopold Weiss. The former remains uncelebrated but the latter is marked by this present recording. Weiss (1686-1750) was the greatest lutenist of his time, famed for his powers of extemporization and respected by Bach, his almost exact contemporary; a jealous rival even tried, unsuccessfully, to bite off Weiss's thumb! His compositional output, most of it for lute solo, was large; the richest sources are manuscripts held in Dresden, London And Moscow (some 66 sonatas/suites and many separate pieces in all) but other have shown up in places as far distant as Buenos Aires. The musical style is predomininantly French (as also are the titles of most of the pieces), and galant rather than contrapuntal (except here, naturally, in the Fugue), heavily ornamented and liberally laced with style brise. The sonatas/suites generally follows the basic pattern of allemande—courante—sarabande—gigue, though often with substitutions and/or additional movements, maybe to provide options in performance. Two things are evident from this recording; first that Weiss's reputation as a composer of substance was merited, and second that Junghanel is an uncommonly fine (and stylish) player of the baroque lute, arguably the most difficult of all plucked-string instruments to subdue. This most enjoyable programme of attractive music is magnificently recorded.'