Vox Luminis /Freiburger Barockconsort / Lionel Meunier BIBER Requiem

 

REQUIEM

 

Pluto-Ensemble / Marnix De Cat / Hathor Consort / Romina Lischka ANIMAM GEMENTEM CANO

ANIMAM GEMENTEM CANO

 

Damien Guillon / Café Zimmermann LAMENTO

LAMENTO

Les Passions de l'Ame / Meret Lüthi DIVINA

DIVINA

Thibault Noally A VIOLINO SOLO

À VIOLINO SOLO

Les Passions de l’Ame / Meret Lüthi VARIETY

THE ART OF VARIATION

Liliana Bernardi AUSTRIAN BAROQUE FOR SOLO VIOLIN

                                          AUSTRIAN BAROQUE FOR SOLO VIOLIN

Accentus Austria COMMEDIA DELL'AUSTRIA

This internationally renowned early music group specializes in the powerfully gripping music of the Sephardic romances passed on by an oral tradition, as well as the court and sacred music of the early sixteenth century (Juan del Encina, Juan de Anchieta, Antonio de Cabezón, etc.) and the more complex polyphony belonging to the later part of that same period. The Accentus Ensemble itself was founded in Vienna in 1988. The total group has 13 members who appear in different combinations depending on the demands of the particular compositions and there are also guest artists who are asked to assist in certain performances that draw upon their special skills. The various members of the Accentus Ensemble are especially adept at the improvisational elements native to the performance practice of the early music of Spain. The group has appeared at early music festivals throughout Europe, at the important Semana de Musica Antigua in Seville, and in Israel.

Girandole Armoniche EXTRAVAGANTES SEICENTO

The focus of Extravagantes Seicento is the musical exuberance of a century full of contradictions, and at the same time receptive towards all kinds of novelty. By means of a rich collection of instrumental sonatas for violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord, the recording portrays the peregrine world of composers and instrumentalists who travelled throughout Europe in their search for receptive cultural circles and the degree of financial stability required for the creation of new works. In particular the Habsburg courts of Vienna and Innsbruck attracted artists from Italy and central Europe, becoming hubs for innovation in the visual arts, the theatre and instrumental music.

Under the imperial protection of Ferdinand III, Leopold I and Archduke Ferdinand Karl of Austria, the great violinists of the 17th century Ignazio Albertini, Giovanni Padonolfi Mealli, Samuel Capricornus, Heinrich Schmelzer and Ignaz Biber expanded the technical potential of the violin and the viola da gamba, producing a repertoire of highly melodious sonatas featuring virtuoso brilliance and such eccentricity of sound as to surprise or even disconcert audiences, both then and today.

Vaughan Jones JOHANN JOSEPH VILSMAŸR Six Partitas for Solo Violin

Anyone who listened to Vaughan Jones’s 2014 release, ‘The Hidden Violin’ (7/14), will know that repertoire rarities don’t always produce a winner of an album. To say that Jones’s latest two-disc set is a great deal more rewarding is something of an understatement. Yes, it’s obscure repertoire once more; but this is music that demands our full attention, presented in such a manner as to ensure that it gets it.

The main event is the first-ever recording of the complete, original set of Six Partitas by Johann Joseph Vilsmaÿr, who worked as an increasingly prominent violinist at the Salzburg court between 1689 and his death in 1722. His Partitas, which pre-date those of Bach by at least five years, are challenging polyphonic works, full of double- and triple-stops, arpeggiated chords and implied conversations between musical lines. French and Italian influences are audible, as is that of Austrian folk music, but the take-home point is simply that they’re intensely beautiful works that constantly tickle the ear with fresh moods, styles and effects as they dance along. Add the immaculate technical precision and immense musicality of Jones’s playing (on a gut-strung modern instrument tuned at A=440kHz and played with a replica snakewood Baroque bow), set it all within the subtly ample acoustic of the church of St Mary Magdalene in Willen, Buckinghamshire, and you have something of a recording triumph which the programme’s other two works only build upon.

First, Pisendel’s Sonata in A minor. Then, to finish, a story: Biber’s The Guardian Angel Sonata, No 16 from the Mystery Sonatas, played with a purity, profundity and sense of dramatic architecture that truly stops you in your tracks. Really, bravo. (Charlotte Gardner / Gramophone)

John Holloway BIBER Unam Ceylum

This is a disc of such stunningly brilliant virtuosity that is hard to know where to start. … This is bravura music in the truest sense, music capable of moving from dynamic energy to eloquence in less time than it takes to write the words, music that can hurtle forward with seemingly unstoppable momentum only to fall back to calm, sensuous lyricism, music that can encompass everything from skilled counterpoint to rumbustuous humour. Holloway’s performances encompasses all this with playing of amazing fluency and bravura passion, at times leaving the listener gasping. He is ably supported (as on his equally superb Schmelzer disc) by both organ and harpsichord, a combination that apparently caused some critical muttering over the Schmelzer recording. The recording has a vivid presence, giving the impression that all three players are in the room with the listener. In short this is a staggering celebration of the art of violin playing that should immediately be added to every Goldberg reader’s collection without delay. (Brian Robins / Goldberg ) 

Virtuosic, experimental, meditative, Biber was a man who seems to have been able to say whatever he liked through the medium of his instrument, and Holloway has contributed as much as anyone to modern-day recognition of his status as one of the greatest of all violinist-composers. … With the violin resonating pleasingly through the many double and triple-stoppings, and Holloway’s bowing demonstrating a delicious lightness and freedom, these fundamentally inward, tonally aware performances also seem somehow to have more of the smell of the 17th century about them than their current rivals. … A respectfully resonant recording is a help here, as is the gentle but effectively unfussy continuo support of harpsichord and organ. (Lindsay Kemp, Gramophone)

John Holloway BIBER / MUFFAT Der Türken Anmarsch

“Der Türken Anmarsch”, a recording distinguished by extraordinarily inventive and committed performances, marks “the end of an era” for John Holloway. The album brings to a conclusion fourteen years of intensive work on Biber’s music. “I have come to an ever greater admiration of Biber,” Holloway says, “and of his immense contribution to the development of the violin as a serious instrument for Western music.” As with his previous album “Unam Ceylum”, the British violinist and his associates perform pieces from Biber’s 1681 anthology, Sonatae Violino solo, which formed the cornerstone of his reputation. They show how secular and sacred concerns are interwoven in music as arresting and as innovative as the “Mystery Sonatas”.
In the liner notes, Peter Wollny writes: “Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704), chapel-master at Salzburg, has gone down in history as one of the greatest violinists of his age. His astonishing prowess can be seen not only in the demanding violin parts he wrote in his music for instrumental and vocal ensemble, but especially in his many sonatas for solo violin. But Biber, in his compositions, was concerned with more than simply flaunting his extraordinary virtuosity: as he stressed several times in the prefaces to his printed editions, his music was meant to be pervaded - and thereby legitimized - by his compositional skills. In making good this claim, he also acquired the reputation of being one of the supreme composers of his generation.”
“Der Türken Anmarsch” takes its title from Biber’s A-Minor Sonata. Some questions remain regarding authorship of parts of the work, for the manuscript is attributed to Schmelzer. Andreas Anton Schmelzer, son of the great violinist composer Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, apparently reworked a piece by Biber to relate it to events of 1683, when the Turks launched an assault on the city of Vienna. Though the programmatic theme – Islam versus Christianity – has lost none of its topicality over three centuries, there is little indication that religious war was on Biber’s mind when he structured the piece. Large parts of the composition clearly stem from Biber’s tenth sonata in the “Mystery Cycle”, intended to depict the crucifixion in the original context.”