Violinsonaten 1681 Franz Biber

A more radiant and gratifyingly robust collection of baroque instrumental works would be hard to imagine. Dedicated to Biber’s patron, Maximilian Gandolph, in the 1676 publication, these 12 sonatas (which broadly translate as ‘sonatas suitable for altar or court’) juxtapose pieces for a rich five- or six-part string palette – pursuing an exhilarating, intensely-wrought, sophisticated and unpredictable musical rhetoric – with quasi-concerted and swaggering trumpets. The two are not mutually exclusive since Biber wrote Sonata VI for a solo trumpet in G minor, a work which stretches the capability of the ‘natural’ instrument and coaxes it into the poignant and refined world of early Italian canzonas.

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber - The Rosary Sonatas
Andrew Manze (violin) / Richard Egarr (organ & harpsichord)
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 690 MB (2x CD) | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Harmonia Mundi USA # HMU 907321/22 | Country/Year: Europe 2002
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

…Manze, a British Baroque violinist who has led the English Concert and the Academy of Ancient Music, brings these pieces alive. Performing on a 1700 violin with sheep gut strings, he retunes the instrument for each sonata rather than playing on a set of pre-tuned instruments. This allows the listener to hear the radical changes in tone the violin undergoes as the levels of pressure on its strings are altered….

Biber & Schmelzer - Sonatas - Freiburger Barockorchester Consort
Classical, Baroque | 1 CD | EAC | FLAC, CUE, LOG | Scans | 386 MB | RS
Recorded: 21-23/11 1994 & 2-5/5 1995, Church Maria Minor, Utrecht, NL
Released: 2009 [1995] | Label: DHM 88697568692 | TT: 74:29
Freiburger Barockorchester Consort

The Freiburg musicians seem to revel in the wonderfully varied sonorities inherent in Biber’s consort textures, responding sympathetically to the composer’s colourfully imaginative tonal palette. The sonatas with trumpet are likely to make instant appeal but it is the more sorrowful utterances of Schmelzer which make a deeper impression on my senses. A fine release. (Nicholas Anderson, Gramophone, July 1996)

Das Berner Ensemble Les Passions de l'Ame erhielt für alle seine Veröffentlichungen bei Deutsche Harmonia Mundi exzellente Besprechungen und wurde 2020 für das Album "Variety" mit einem OPUS KLASSIK ausgezeichnet.

In a kind of High Baroque version of the duelling guitars from the film ‘Deliverance’, Alba have contrived to set Heinrich Biber and Georg Muffat against each other as rivals in a virtual virtuoso set-piece. The evidence for this is perhaps a little thin, but what is true is that both of these almost exact contemporaries worked for a while at the same time in the Court of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. This period in the 1670s and 1680s gives rise to the not unreasonable speculation that there was a “rivalry that in all probability existed between them for the favour of their influential employer”, presumably with the ambition of ending up as Hofkapellmeister.

Biber & Muffat - Sonatas
Classical, Baroque | 1 CD | EAC | FLAC, CUE, LOG | Scans | 326 MB | RS
Recorded: Jan. & Apr. 1993, Church of Maria Minor, Utrecht, Netherlands
Released: 2002 [1994] | Label: DHM 05472 77844 2 | TT: 59:00
Freiburger Barockorchester Consort

This is wonderful music and the Freiburger Barockorchester Consort play it with a rhythmic vitality and elasticity that is at times toe-tappingly infectious. Their performances of the Biber sonatas have a verve and energy and combined with an admirable rhythmic flexibility, so that each of the varied short sections moves naturally into the next. Part of their secret is to give each little section its full due, irrespective of length. This makes for a lively but coherent performance of each sonata. And in the slower sections they are able to thin their tone down to a wonderful transparency. The Muffatt sonatas are rather more robust but here also, the group shines. (Robert Hugill, musicweb-international.com, 2003)

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704) - Fidicinium Sacro-Profanum
Les Plaisirs du Parnasse / David Plantier
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 368 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: ZigZag # ZZT080701 | Country/Year: France 2008
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

"…But, with his Fidicinium, Biber exploits the subject in a wholly innovative fashion, thanks to multiple musical and symbolic references, thereby asserting his status as one of the major figures of his era." - David Plantier

From Biber’s famous ‘Guardian Angel’ Passacaglia to Guillemain’s ‘Amusements’ and sonatas and fantasias by Matteis (father and son), Pisendel and Vilsmayr, Isabelle Faust offers us a panorama of European music for unaccompanied violin from the second half of the Baroque era. Dreamy or virtuosic, these pieces bear witness to the diversity of inspirations from Italy, France, England and the German-speaking countries - and to their marvellous intermingling echoes.

Johann Sebastian Bach, the newly appointed Cantor of the Thomaskirche, undertook his first official journey from Leipzig to nearby Störmthal in 1723, where he and his Thomanerchor inaugurated the beautiful new organ built by Zacharias Hildebrandt, a pupil of Silbermann. Bach was thrilled by the instrument’s splendid timbres and tonal beauty. A particularly beautiful violin was made by the German luthier David Tecchler in Rome — 1400 km from Störmthal — during that same year. Both instruments have survived and have been excellently restored; now, three hundred years after their creation, they meet for the first time.

Italian violinists invaded germanic countries from the beginning of the 17th century, with Farina in Dresden, Marini in Neuburg and Bertali in Vienna. Their influence was considerable, stretching over the entire Empire to the furthest flung towns of Central or Northern Germany. The Italian sonata went hand in hand with the violin, exemplifying a taste for the fantastic and the baroque. Michal Praetorius, despite his knowledge of Italian musical practice, preferred to discuss the instrument under its German name of "Geige", although the term of "violino" soon began to appear in every musical publication In this eagerly awaited, special prized re-release of his remarkable anthology of early violin music, François Fernandez gives a us a masterly and higly seductive lesson of style.