Biber Herrmann Love

For much of the Baroque period, there was no useful distinction between orchestral and chamber music. All music, unless performed in church or on some festive occasion, was cultivated in the home, and even the concertos of Vivaldi and Bach rarely require more than a dozen people for an adequate performance. These "sonatas," which consist of single movement compositions with several linked sections, variously employ violins, violas, trumpets (and drums), cellos and continuo instruments (harpsichord, organ, lute). Biber had a unique ability to come up with catchy tunes and arrange them in formally satisfying way. The music is brilliant and consistently engaging. So are these performances.

Biber’s reputation as an outstanding musician led the prince-archbishop of Salzburg to poach him from the Count Liechtenstein-Castelcorn in 1670. Six years later, the composer published his Sonatae tam aris quam aulis servientes, paying tribute to the sacred and secular activities of his Salzburg patron. Under Manfredo Kraemer’s leadership, the Rare Fruits Council gives a superb account of this music. The ensemble is deftly controlled throughout and trumpets add a brilliant gloss.

The technology at our command, the electronic images we see every day, the ease and swiftness of world travel and communication has left modern humans with a waning sense of awe. We can argue about who was or is better off, but for 17th century Europeans, awe-inspiring events happened with some regularity. Pageantry was one of the more effective and popular means to impress a congregation, and there was nothing like a huge celebration in a massive cathedral to remind each person of his place in the grand scheme.

Heinrich Biber was a giant of the Baroque violin. Just as the electric guitar has become the instrument of "the people" during the late 20th century, so the violin was for the Baroque period. The older family of viols was a mainstay of the aristocracy, while the lighter and louder violin came to embody the voice of the people, and subsequently of the courts. Heinrich Biber was Austrian, but was inspired by the Italian style of fantastic, wild improvisatory playing, and had a lifestyle to match.

Of all the recordings now available of Biber…this [is] by far and away the most spectacular, exuberant, colourful and downright ravishing of them all. Huggett positively revels in the virtuosity of Biber’s original…Huggett’s beautifully crafted performance of the complex and, at times, profoundly moving solo Passacaglia rounds off what is a matchless recording from every perspective.

Whether we call them ‘Mystery’ or ‘Rosary’ Sonatas, these fifteen pieces crowned by a sublime passacaglia for unaccompanied violin form one of the greatest violinistic masterpieces of the Baroque repertory. This version by Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti, derived from a dance project with the Rosas company, leads us into their magical universe through a novel prism: that of movement, to which these pieces are an infinite ode!

Whether we call them ‘Mystery’ or ‘Rosary’ Sonatas, these fifteen pieces crowned by a sublime passacaglia for unaccompanied violin form one of the greatest violinistic masterpieces of the Baroque repertory. This version by Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti, derived from a dance project with the Rosas company, leads us into their magical universe through a novel prism: that of movement, to which these pieces are an infinite ode!