Customer Reviews

Biber: Harmonia Artificioso-Ariosa

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This is a really superb recording of instrumental music by the Bohemian baroque composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. The New York-based ensemble Rebel, aptly named after the adventurous French baroque composer Jean-Féry Rebel, are a stylish, imaginative and highly skilled group of musicians and thus eminently suited to performing Biber's extraordinarily brilliant pieces. To get the most obvious objection to this recording out of the way first, Biber's "Harmonia artificioso-ariosa" is actually a set of seven Partie or suites, mostly for two scordatura (i.e. deliberately mistuned) violins and continuo, but here Rebel bring us the first six works and omit number 7. In fact this decision works extremely well, firstly because the seventh piece is set somewhat apart from the others in being scored for two viole d'amore; secondly because it allows the resulting 72 minutes of music to fit onto one CD whereas some of the other available sets take two; and lastly because it enables the group to bring their programme to a stunning close with their tour de force of the Aria and 13 variations, with brief finale, of the sixth Partia.

To state again what will already be well known to fans of Biber's music, these works are absolute jewels of the baroque instrumental repertory. What is more, Rebel perform them with panache, virtuosity, delicacy and feeling, playing with inventive freedom and with highly effective use of rubato and other expressive devices. In fact the only 'expressive device' that was not to my taste was the unwarranted fade-out at the end of the Partia V passacaglia. But just listen, if you can, to the stunning violin duetting in the above-mentioned Aria in Partia no. VI/2, a jaunty and memorable melody with 13 increasingly brilliant variations; or, to catch a flavour of the other pieces, try the drama of the opening Sonata in I/1, the wonderful Sarabande of I/5, or any of the movements from Partia III such as the highly rhetorical Sonata of III/1 or - my personal favourite - the gorgeous Ciacona of III/6, here moved along a bit faster than in some other performances I've heard.

The players' historic instruments, all carefully detailed in the booklet, sound wonderful and are quite beautifully recorded. Continuo is played in equally fine style on violoncello and organ. John Moran's booklet notes are both useful and enjoyable, and even the cover painting - a 17th-century Dutch still life by Adriaen van Utrecht - strikes just the right note for Biber's music, expressing luxury, loquacity, caprice, plenty, as well as musical and other delights.

These Biber works have already been well served on disc, with several fine sets available including excellent versions from Reinhard Goebel's Musica Antiqua Köln and from the Purcell Quartet, but this recording by Rebel has a refreshing appeal all of its own. Here is incredibly engaging and enjoyable music-making; not only is it very likely to appeal to those jaded early music fans who already know it all - not meaning you or me, obviously - but it would also make a brilliant introduction for those who are new to the enchanted world of baroque instrumental music.