Tallinn XI Guitar Festival
June 13-17. 2016

“Mad Dog”: The Elizabethan Lute
English Music of the Golden Age

Hopkinson Smith, 8-course Lute

Works by John Dowland (1563-1626), Anthony Holborne (?-1602), and John Johnson (?-1594)

Fare Thee Well (Holborne)
Muy Linda (Holborne)
My Selfe (Holborne)
Mad Dog (Holborne)

Johnson’s Jewell (Johnson)
A Pavan (Johnson)
It fell on a holy eve (Holborne)
Heigh Ho Holiday (Holborne)

Prelude (Dowland)
Fantasie (5) (Dowland)

Shoes and Passion
The Cobbler (Anonymous)
Passion (Holborne)
The Shoemaker’s Wife (Dowland)

Last Will and Testament (Holborne)
The Fairy Round (Holborne)

Fantasy by the most famous Gregorio Huwet (and John Dowland)

Three Feminine Portraits
Lady Clifton’s Spirit (Dowland)
Mignarda (Dowland)
Lady Hunsdon’s Allmand (Dowland)

Renaissance Lute made by Joel van Lennep, New Hampshire, USA.

“Hopkinson Smith is without doubt the finest lute player in the world today…”

“…a major artist of our time”

“Hopkinson Smith is the supreme ‘poet’ of the lute.”

Born in New York in 1946, Hopkinson Smith graduated from Harvard with Honors in Music in 1972. The next year he came to Europe to study with Emilio Pujol in Catalonia and Eugen Dombois in Switzerland. He then became involved in numerous chamber music projects including the founding of the ensemble Hespèrion XX. Since the mid-80’s, he has focused almost exclusively on the solo repertoires for early plucked instruments producing a series of prize-winning recordings for Naïve. These feature Spanish music for vihuela and baroque guitar, French lute music of the Renaissance and baroque, early 17th century Italian music and the German high baroque.

The recording of his lute arrangements of the Bach solo violin Sonatas and Partitas, released in the year 2000, has been universally acclaimed by the press. Gramophone magazine called it “the best recording of these works on any instrument”. A Dowland recording, out since early 2005, won a Diapason d’Or and was called ‘wonderfully personal’ in a review in the New York Times. A recording with music from the world of Francesco da Milano, was awarded a Diapason d’Or de l’Année (the French equivalent of a Grammy award) in November 2009 and has been called “the first recording to do justice to Francesco’s reputation.” A CD with the first three Bach ‘cello Suites played on the German Theorbo was released in early 2013, has also won a Diapason d’Or and was called “totally riveting” in the BBC Music Magazine.

Hopkinson Smith has performed and given master classes throughout eastern and western Europe, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan sometimes combining the life-style of a hermit with that of a gypsy. In 2007 and 2009, he gave concerts and workshops in Palestine under the auspices of the Barenboim-Said Foundation and the Swiss Arts Council. In 2010, he received the music prize from the Italian Region of Puglia with the inscription “maestro dei maestri, massimo interprete delle musiche per liuto dell’antica Europa Mediterranea”, and he is the 2015 winner of the Music Prize from the city of Petrer in the province of Alicante in Spain. He teaches at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.

1. Invierno Porteño - Astor Piazzolla
2. Preludio n.1 y Scherzino-Choro - Heitor Villa-Lobos
3. Tres Valses Venezolanos - Antonio Lauro
  • Carora
  • La Negra
  • Natalia
4. La Catedral - Agustín Barrios
  • Preludio
  • Andante religioso
  • Allegro solemne

5. Valses op.8 n.3, 4 - Agustín Barrios
6. Canción de Cuna y Ojos Brujos - Leo Brouwer
7. Suite II - Leo Brouwer
  • Preludio
  • Allegro Burlesco
  • Andantino
8. Sonata del Pensador n.4 (to Ricardo Gallén) - L. Brouwer

* I. Recuperación de la Memoria
* II. Iluminaciones
* III. Elogio de la Meditación
* IV. Celebración de la Memoria

Ricardo Gallén is one of the greatest classical guitarists of our time. He has given highly acclaimed solo recitals throughout Europe and America and performed in concerts under the direction of well-known conductors.

He has recorded many works for the state radios and televisions in Spain, Finland, Belgium, Romania, Germany, Cuba, Mexico, Poland, Chile, South Korea, Hungary and Bulgaria. He has also recorded four CD’s for NAXOS in which he performs music by Giuliani, Brouwer, and Takemitsu among others, as well as all of the concertos for guitar and orchestra by the Spanish master Joaquin Rodrigo. His first recording was one of NAXOS' fifty top selling CD’s for 2001 and received laudatory reviews in the press.

Ricardo Gallén has received over twenty international prizes. In 2009 he became one of the youngest musicians to become a professor at the prestigious University of Music "Franz List" in Weimar, Germany, a position that he holds today.