NOTE: This series of programs featuring Swiss artists is made possible in part with support from the Embassy of Switzerland in Washington, D.C. The New Swiss Residence showcases Swiss architectural and artistic qualities. For more information about the building and public events that take place there, go to:

www.swissemb.org
Switzerland has one of the densest museum networks in the world: one museum for about every 7,400 people. Read more at:
www.Swissworld.org
This is the website of Presence Switzerland (PRS),
an official body of the Swiss Confederation which promotes the worldwide dissemination of general knowledge about Switzerland.

After concentrating in Musicology at Harvard, Hopkinson Smith came to Europe in 1973 to study with Emilio Pujol, a great pedagogue in the highest Catalan artistic tradition, and with Swiss master Eugen Dombois, whose sense of organic unity between performer, instrument and historical period has had a lasting effect on him. Internationally recognized as a leading personality in the field of early music and one of the world's great lutenists, Hopkinson Smith gives concerts and master classes throughout Eastern and Western Europe and in North and South America. He currently lives in Basel, Switzerland, where he teaches at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.

Victor Coelho writes in this recording, "The Libro primo d'intavolatura di lauto (Rome, 1611) is the only lutebook that has survived by the enigmatic 'noble German' Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (c.1580-1651), but it contains perhaps the most passionate, expressive, and strikingly original music in the history of the Italian lute tradition."

This recording is on the Naive/Astree label, and is CD# E 8827.

Libro primo d'intavolatura di lauto

--Gagliarda 5.
--Toccata 1.
--Canario.
--Corrente 8.
--Toccata 2.
--Corrente 7.
--Toccata 3.
--Gagliarda 10.
--Toccata 4.
--Corrente 10.
--Toccata 5.
--Corrente 12.
--Gagliarda 12.
--Toccata 6.
--Gagliarda 9.
--Gagliarda 1.
--Toccata 7.
--Gagliarda 3.
--Gagliarda 2.
--Toccata 8.
--Corrente 6.
--Corrente 1.
--Toccata Arpeggiata.
--Corrente 11.
--Gagliarda 4.