Weiss’s sonatas are, for the most part, devoted to traditional structure in name but surprisingly daring in actual content. They bring the usual baroque mix of allemandes, courantes, minuets, and sarabandes, but Weiss is constantly tinkering with these forms, expanding them to hold his own spacious imagination for melodic material and emotional import. Sometimes, as on this disc, courantes take on the tenor and length of fantasies, and previous issues have included minuets with multiple trios, movements of unending melody-spinning, pedal points and counterpoint, and a sarabande (on Volume 7) which begins, trickily, in disguise as a minuet.

As for the emotional tenor of the sonatas, they range from introverted, brooding works like the two sonatas in D minor on Volume 8 to sunny salon music, always eloquent, written to give the player modest technical demands and even greater expressive ones. Robert Barto has been consistently up to the task, with grace and a beautifully improvisatory approach which has, in past volumes, made me think of Weiss as a sort of baroque Chopin.

For this tenth volume, Barto brings us two of Weiss’s more outgoing works, beginning with the Sonata No. 28 in F major, Le fameux Corsaire, an outdoorsy charmer of a piece with lively dance movements and, one imagines fancifully, a fresh breeze of sea air. The subtitle, however, seems to have arisen not because the music has anything to do with pirates or the ocean, but, perhaps, simply because it was a catchy name. Who knows? Maybe a corsair with a patient ear for this type of musical good cheer would be happy to call it his own.

The Sonata No. 40, in C, is an epic of the form, nearing the 40 minute mark! But Weiss never wastes his time, whether in the gently rocking courante or the paysanne, the shortest movement but one of the most tuneful. The sonata’s eight-minute sarabande never grows old, a testament to Weiss’s skill in creating and then skilfully varying his melodic material. Movements like these emphasize Barto’s own instinct for quasi-improvisatory playing; he makes the carefully ornamented movement seem like a fresh invention of his own. And the equally long finale, which begins with a strong sense of purpose and never relents, made me glad that Barto honors every repeat in these scores. As the movement wends its way to a deeply satisfying conclusion, with a wonderful sense of homecoming, I immediately wished I could hear those last few moments again. Wish granted: the repeat let me hear it all once more!

The Tombeau sur la mort de M. Comte de Logy provides a moving close to the CD; here, to commemorate the death of one of Europe’s premiere lutenists, Weiss curtails his gift for melodic riches and slows down the pace for a plainspoken elegy on the simplest of themes.

As those who have heard the previous volumes in the series will expect, Robert Barto’s playing is perfect; the Weiss series has justifiably solidified his reputation as one of the greatest lutenists alive. As in previous volumes, Barto plays a lute by Andrew Rutherford, based on the 13-course instrument invented by Weiss himself. Sound quality, like everything else here, is exemplary.

In other words, this series continues to be an excellent introduction to the musical world of a great composer, in the hands of a lutenist with few equals. Collectors will need this album and anyone with an interest in the baroque era who has missed these discs so far is left no excuse. Robert Barto’s series of the Weiss lute sonatas is one of the most important, and most artistically accomplished, recording projects in baroque music today.

The earlier sonata—it’s a feature of the series not to run chronologically; Weiss had early, middle and late periods—was written c.1719. The dance patterns are explored with mesmeric understanding by Barto. The typically rounded exploration of the bass sonorities of the ‘enlarged’ lute is one component, but so too is the warmly textured account of the Courante, say, with its buoyant rhythmicality. The gentle and reflective Sarabande is lighter than one usually finds with Weiss, certainly in relation to the late sonatas, but this lighter-textured approach suits the airy Menuet and the fluid virtuosity of the Presto finale, its resonant vitality not pressed too hard by Barto.

The C major, penned around 1728, is a mid-period work. This is a larger sonata, lasting fully thirty-eight minutes, but it’s one measure of Barto’s mediation that you are never conscious of the relative length of a work such as this. It’s something I’ve been aware of throughout this series; the ability to halt time. The measured gravity of the Entrée is enhanced by the grandly noble extended bass notes. Try the Courante where articulation is spot-on, where colour is plangent and the rhythmic underpinning moves the dance forward with inexorable but never inflexible control. Well, the superlatives could go on for ever I suppose; the ‘improvised elaboration’ of the Sarabande—long, slow and gentle—or the so-called, as per the notes, ‘concerto allegro’ of a finale. This opens with vivid thwacking and ushers in some virtuoso writing, fit for a Weiss or Prince Lobkowicz himself—a performer and composer into the bargain.

The last piece is the gravely powerful Tombeau sur le mort de M. Comte de Logy, where the sense of pathos is generated through cadences of unremitting nobility and haunting intimacy.

Marvellously vivid performances, and beautifully recorded into the bargain. Enough said.