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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
Manze is the first modern virtuoso of the baroque violin, March 22, 1999
By A Customer
This won a Gramophone Award a couple years ago, at which point I had never heard of Andrew Manze. The praise was so lavish I was persuaded to buy. What I heard was so extravagantly talented that I wondered why I'd never heard of this violinist before.Manze is every bit as much of an alchemist on the violin as is Perlman or any of the top-notch modern violinists you care to name. In boldness of tone and incisiveness, he reminds me of Salvatore Accardo, who did some impressive Vivaldi on the modern violin in the 70's. Manze adds to it a great sense of style and technique that blows you away. As mentioned by the Amazon.com reviewer, the Sonatas Representativas have some animal-imitative glissandi and other special effects that are pulled off with a playfulness and precision that are breathtaking. I liked Reinhard Goebel's rendition of the Passacaglia (on Archiv, with the Mystery Sonatas) until I heard Manze. Manze plays it so well I can't listen to Goebel now. This is certainly the best baroque violin playing I have ever heard.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Breathtaking!, February 7, 2000
I didn't think I'd ever be reviewing an instrumental recording. I lack an intuitive understanding of instrumental music, so, resources being limited, I usually limit my collection to vocal genres. But this recording was so wildly praised by critics (Gramophone award; BBC Music 50 best baroque recordings of all time, etc.), that I decided to give it a shot. I'm glad I did. The music is absolutely fascinating, and brilliantly performed. The inventive melodies, full of varied nuances, leave a constant impression of improvization - it is almost hard to believe that in fact every note is captured on the printed page. With the composer's virtuosity so vividly imprinted in the music, Andrew Manze is careful not to over-characterize these sonatas. Every response is calculated to match the mood of the material: from the mellifluous preludes, such as in Sonatas 2 & 3, to the deft recitatives, such as in Sonata 5, down to the whimsical animal effects in Sonata Representativa. Although Manze's violing playing definitely takes center stage, the other two musicians also need to be lauded for their wonderful contributions. I particularly enjoyed the Passacaglia for solo lute played by Nigel North. Interestingly, this lute piece improvizes on the melody that is also heard in Sonata 6 - and in both cases the melody is tantalizingly familiar. It is no secret that Biber didn't shy away from borrowing other people's music. If you figure out where this one comes from, please let me know.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
The best by the best, January 28, 2003
Biber is the finest German composer between Schutz and Bach. In fact, since discovering Biber, I've found that Bach gets a little difficult to listen to. Among other things, Biber was one of the greatest--perhaps the greatest--violin virtuosi of the 17th century. (Charles Burney among others was of that opinion.) These sonatas are transcendant. I first heard about 10 seconds of the first track of this recording on NPR and immediately had to buy it.Andrew Manze is probably the finest violinist in the world, and has the incredible good taste to specialize in 17th and 18th century music. Every one of his recordings (I have about 20) is wonderful. This recording is a must.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
A matter of taste..., February 7, 2006
While some argue over Souther European/Italian style performance versus Northern/German performances, the truth is that we don't definitively know how music in this period was performed. None the less, Manze and Romanesca's performance of these sonatas, and in particular, the Sonata Representativa is engaging from beginning to end. Perhaps the best known recording of this sonata, other than this one, is the performance of Reinhard Goebel and the Musica Antiqua of Köln. Both performances are outstanding. A few key differences define them. Manze makes use of a diverse continuo: harpsichord, organ and archlute; while Goebel employs organ alone. The obvious acoustical differences also come into play; Musica Antiqua's studio-polished acoustics, versus the as-is stone chamber reverb of Romanesca's. The overall effect is that the Manze performance is brave and bold while the Goebel performance is more elegant and delicate. In the end, it is a matter of taste as to whether one prefers a particular style of performance over another. I own copies of both these recordings and would not claim one is better than the other. They are simply different.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Hats off to Romanesca, February 7, 2001
If I can only take one Baroque recording to a deserted island, this would be it. My favorite track in this 2-CD set is track 2 on CD#1. I must have played this track for hundreds of times in my car during the past year and a half. I have never gotten tired of listening to it and doubt I ever will. I have another recording (a 1994 recording with violinist Marianne Ronez of Switzerland) of these Biber sonatas from Cavalli Records and it sounds no where as impressive as Romanesca's.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Hats off to Romanesca, February 7, 2001
If I can only take one Baroque recording to a deserted island, this would be it. My favorite track in this 2-CD set is track 2 on CD#1. I must have played this track hundreds of times in my car during the past year and a half. I have never gotten tired of listening to it and doubt I ever will. I have another recording (a 1994 recording with violinist Marianne Ronez of Switzerland) of these Biber sonatas from Cavalli Records and it sounds no where as impressive as Romanesca's.
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A Seriously Fantastic CD, April 2, 2000
By A Customer
This CD is probably one of the best reocrdings that i own, and it find that it is strage that i had never heard of Andrew Manze before the Gramaphone review that i read, which compelled me to buy this CD. And what a CD !! The playing is magnificent, and improvisational, and, just like Andrew Manze playing of the Pandolfi sonatas, impeccably in tune, perfectly phrazed, and played with great flourish, and beat of drum. I really hope that he, and Romanesca, continue to record so much, and to such a high standard.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Hats off to Romanesca, February 7, 2001
If I can only take one Baroque recording to a deserted island, this would be it. My favorite track in this 2-CD set is track 2 on CD#1. I must have played this track hundreds of times in my car during the past year and a half. I have never gotten tired of listening to it and doubt I ever will. I have another recording (a 1994 recording with violinist Marianne Ronez of Switzerland) of these Biber sonatas from Cavalli Records and it sounds no where as impressive as Romanesca's.
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5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
An Academic Performance, October 8, 2005
This performance represents a common problem with many academic and traditional Baroque chamber groups who focus more on technique rather than the lyricism of the piece: painful screeches and abrubt changes in pace that have no mood or expression to effectuate a technical execution demanded more by Bach than by Biber. It's enough to give many a big migraine as if someone's nails just scratched the blackboard. This is certainly not one of the group's worst performances in this genre but their performance here is far from perfect.
Franz Ignaz Biber was Kappelmeister to the Arch-bishop of Salzburg for most of his life and was trained in the Catholic/Italian musical tradition. He was a very innovative violin composer with the traditional Baroque violin and many of his sonatas are in strange keys requiring a lot of lyrical expressionism which Manze lacks as a performer. Manze and Romanesca are talented musicians but they tend to approach their interpretations very academically and such over-emphasis in technique kills the passion of something in the nature of a lyrical sonata such as these works here. Such techniques tend to work better with Protestant German Baroque solo violin arrangements such as Bach's violin partitas and sonatas that are technically demanding and more methodical in actual performance. The Catholic tradition is more more expressive with solo violin pieces especially lyrical pieces and Manze is simply not a very impressive performer for this style as he simply puts more method than passion into his performance when the piece actually demands the exact opposite. Manze and Romanesca are methodical traditionalists and tend to overperform or accentuate even more on certain Baroque techniques that were either not as prevalent in the Italian style or upon pieces of whose composers such as Vivaldi and Biber were not really traditionalists themselves in strictly applying the conventions of their time. These performances require a very fluid technique of expression that Manze simply lacks as a violinist for this particular style. Compare Goebel's/Musika Antiqua Koln's passionate expression in their rendition for Biber's 'Mystery Sonatas' such as the final Passacaglia to Manze's with Romanesca and you will hear the difference and which is superior.
Generally for such performances I prefer Musica Antiqua Koln who specialize in the Catholic German Baroque tradition as opposed to other groups such as The Academy of St. Martin or Raymond Leppard who specialize in either traditional or romantic interpretations of the more familiar Protestant Baroque tradition of Bach and Handel.
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