2009 release from L'Arpeggiata, the French-based ensemble directed by Austrian-born harpist and lutenist Christina Pluhar. L'Arpeggiata has made a speciality of exploring and exploiting the close links between Baroque repertoire and the traditional music of the Latin world and its characteristic forms such as the tarantella, the folia or the canario. On Via Crucis, 'the way of the Cross', the focus is on the pervasive presence of religious feeling in Southern Europe. The Passion of Christ evokes the same fervour in composers such as Giovanni Felice Sances (1600-1679) or Tarquinio Merula (1594-1665) - both active in northern Italy – as it does in the streets of Naples or the villages of Corsica. The two main works in the collection are Sance's extraordinary Stabat Mater and Merula's Hor ch'e tempo di dormire, in which the Virgin Mary lulls her baby to sleep while weeping for his future suffering and both enthrall the listener with a basso ostinato and hypnotic swaying rhythms.

With the flood of recordings devoted to the freethinking Salzburg Baroque composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, it is not surprising that his predecessor as Salzburg music director, Andreas Hofer, has been resurrected. There is nothing here to rival Biber's outlandish and fascinating programmatic ideas; Hofer's sacred music, as represented on this disc, falls much closer to the Venetian-derived German mainstream inherited from Schütz. That said, this is an ideal purchase for anyone who likes Schütz, Biber, or the south German Baroque in general. The album reproduces a hypothetical Vespers service of the area, featuring the music Hofer, as kapellmeister, might have drawn together for a festive event – mostly his own, but also including works by Biber, Giovanni Valentini, and Johann Baptist Dolar.

This commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the death of Biber is subtitled ‘In the midst of life we are in death’ and divided into ‘Vita’ and ‘Mors’. The ‘Life’ section consists of the Mass interspersed with all but two of the pieces by other composers listed above; ‘Death’ wraps the Praeludium and Lassus’s Media vita… round the Requiem.

Several masses with large orchestration attest to the outstanding compositional skills of the Salzburg master Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704) in coping with large ensembles. As usual in Salzburg, Biber expects polychoral performances. The church music at the Salzburg cathedral drew its orientation from the performance practice in Venice. The Missa Alleluia was probably composed after 1690 and certainly before 1698, because a manuscript was made in Kremsmunster that year. The original score and sheets from Salzburg are lost. Excellent copies have been preserved at the Upper Austrian abbey at Kremsmunster: they serve as a basis for the present recording. Biber has fully exploited the possibilities of Baroque Instrumentation in the Missa Alleluia: a chorus with 2 sopranos, 2 altos, 2 tenors and 2 bass voices grants him a large number of combinations of voices and thus constant change of timbre. The strings choir also has six parts, with both violins often conducted virtuosically. A chorus with 3 trumpets and 2 cornetti is even surpassed in tonal mass by the chorus composed of 2 clarini, 4 trumpets, and timpani. This large number of trumpets emphasizes the cheerful character of the work and is very luxurious by Austrian standards.

For fans of Il Giardino Armonico's flamboyant flourishes and exuberant expressiveness, it's like having all your birthdays at once, being presented with this great Warner Classics 11 CD set. My own feeling is that this "free" approach to Baroque music is at its best when applied to the theatrical music of disc 8 or the seventeenth century Italian music on disc 1. The showmanship and playfulness is an absolute joy in many of those pieces. I'm less satisfied with the interpretations of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, (on discs 10 and 11), which require a different approach, I feel. I like my Bach to be a little more measured and subtle, I suppose. It has no need of the Il Giardino Armonico treatment. On the whole, though, I do love this set and wouldn't be without it.

This CD is a well-chosen sample of Biber’s finest ensemble music. One of the supreme violinists and virtuoso composers of the 17th century, much of Biber's work remains underplayed and relatively obscure. However, as Burnley wrote, over 100 years after many of the pieces on this disc were composed, ‘of all the violin players of the last century Biber seems to have been the best, and his solos are the most difficult and most fanciful of any music I have seen of the same period’.

The 17th-century Bohemian/Austrian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber is best known for his works for solo violin, especially the Mystery Sonatas. However, he also wrote a considerable amount of music for string ensemble, including a set of 12 chamber sonatas subtitled Fidicinium Sacro-Profanum which was first published in Nuremberg in 1683. The title refers to the fact that the music in the sonatas combine sacred and secular styles. In his collection, Biber set new standards in the field of string chamber music. In the first part he composes for a five-part string ensemble: 2 violins, 2 violas, violone and basso continuo, a combination that was established at his time as the standard ensemble in Austrian cultural circles.

Music Director of Tafelmusik from 1981 to 2014, Jeanne Lamon was loved by audiences, and praised by critics in Europe and North America for her virtuosity as a violinist and her brilliant musical leadership. Under her direction, Tafelmusik achieved international stature with over 80 recordings to its name, and with tours to over 350 international cities including invitations to the most prestigious concert halls and festivals in the world.

This CD is a wonderful selection of shorter works by the composer, including two of his radical programmatic pieces, played with skillful zest or, where appropriate, contained emotion by the Concentius Musicus Wien directed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Originally written for the virtuoso orchestra of the Bishop of Olomouc, the performances here are based on the original, unrevised manuscripts. The collection opens with the "Sonata II a 5 Violae", one of the two included five-part string sonatas, accompanied by a continuo with bass and harpsichord in a lively Allegro, which alternates with brief Adagio interludes, and seques eventually into a skipping triple meter Presto tempo and an Adagio coda.

Biber was one of the most talented and fascinating composers of the 17th century. He spent his life working between Czechoslovakia and Austria, attaining a considerable amount of fame and even earning a patent of nobility (he was permitted later in life to refer to himself as "von" Biber). His instrumental music is the most fanciful and entertaining of the period, partly due to his use of scordatura, or mistuning. This technique requires a different violin-string tuning for each of the seven partitas in this collection, which gives each a particular instrumental color. A partita, by the way, is the same thing as a suite–a selection of dances collected together to make a contrasting set.

The winner of numerous prestigious prizes, including several Gramophone Awards, the vocal ensemble Vox Luminis, founded by Lionel Meunier in 2004, is now regarded as a benchmark in the interpretation of the great works of German Baroque music. Its unfailingly faithful and lively approach to such masters as Bach, Buxtehude and Scheidt has made the group’s reputation, but this new recording features a major work by Heinrich Biber, a composer hitherto absent from its discography: his Requiem in F minor for 14 voices, composed around 1692. The programme is completed by two sacred works by Christoph Bernhard (Herr, nun lässest du deinen Diener in Friede fahren and Tribularer si nescirem misericordias tuas), two pieces by Johann Joseph Fux, and the Sonata a 6 in A minor of Johann Michael Nicolai.

The solo violin pieces of the Baroque period are not just limited to the sonatas and partitas of Johann Sebastian Bach, although these certainly represented its highpoint. Other violinist/composers in Germany sought to translate their polyphonic tradition to this four-stringed instrument, exceeding the instrument’s apparent limitations.

Biber’s sole extant opera, Arminio, was composed c1692 and first performed in Salzburg. Probably intended as a chamber work, its intimate settings are matched by music of subtle delights, with lovelorn laments, comic scenes and splashes of colour. Barbara Schlick leads a fine team of singers and the period-instrument Salzburger Hofmusik provides spirited support. A real Baroque treat.

–Graham Lock

"Les Sonates du Rosaire" forment l'un des cycles les plus originaux jamais composés pour le violon et qui fit la célébrité de Biber jusqu'à nos jours. Utilisant un accord du violon différent (scordatura) dans chacune de ses 15 sonates - toutes interprétées sur le même instrument d'Amati -, ce cycle représente le sommet de l'invention baroque et du style virtuose du XVIIe siècle. Distingué par un Gramophone Award, le duo Andrew Manze - Richard Egarr relève ce défi de manière éblouissante. Andrew Manze joue sur un violon Amati, 1700 ; archet de Gerhard Landwehr, Heemstede, 1988 d'après un modèle italien. Ce titre est paru pour la première fois en 2004.

Das Freiburger Barockorchester zählt zu den wichtigsten Kammerorchestern weltweit. Zahlreiche nationale und internationale Auszeichnungen, darunter der Grammy Award, Echo Klassik oder der Deutsche Schallplattenpreis sind Zeugnisse ihres einzigartigen Schaffens.