Heinrich Biber (1644-1704)
Complete Violin Sonatas 1681
Bojan Čičič (violin)
The Illyria Consort
rec. 2024, St Martin’s Church, East Woodhay, UK
Delphian DCD34334 [121]

The prodigious technique of Austrian-Bohemian composer and violinist Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber as a performer made alarmingly adventurous fingerings and multiple stopping easy. Indeed, his playing was known at the time as a phenomenon, a model of virtuosity which went further than such Italian models as Uccellini, by whom he was influenced, as he was by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, who may have been Biber’s teacher.

His work began to be explored in the last decades of the twentieth century by performers like Andrew Manze, whose recording of the Violin Sonatas with Romanesca on Harmonia Mundi (HMU 907134.35) remains a classic,  and there was a danger that virtuosity might eclipse the immense substance and originality of Biber’s writing. Indeed, Croatian-born violinist and director, Bojan Čičič, acknowledges a debt to that recording of nearly thirty years ago.

Like others whose recordings of Biber’s string music have eschewed sparkle for its own sake and revealed its depth as well as beauty – Rachel Podger’s on Channel CCSSA37315, for instance; and Monica Huggett with Sonnerie on CDGAU203 – this recording on two CDs by Čičič and The Illyria Consort lets the music breath and speak for itself. Crescendi and slightly snappier tempi always have a purpose. The players – true virtuosi all – see no need to step forward to impress us.

Their loyalty is to the openness, the inventive turns and subtleties of Biber’s writing. There is momentum without haste. Pauses for reflection (as in the two adagio passages of the third sonata’s third movement [CD.1. tr.12], for instance) are neither lingering nor artificially emphatic. Nor are they dressed up merely to offer contrast. The music’s structural threads – not golden; more silver – with which Čičič never once loses touch, quietly demand nuance and rumination, both of which these outstanding performances unostentatiously extend to them.

At the same time, these forces are quietly aware of Biber’s adventurousness; he made use of scordatura and ‘advanced’ harmonic innovation, including improvisation, for instance. These too could so easily be overstretched by players who see Biber as something of a ‘cult’ composer, especially given the intense religious imagery with which the Rosary (also known as Mystery) Sonatas from a few years earlier are shot through.

These two CDs contain the collection of eight sonatas for violin and continuo from 1681, C138 to C145, together with the sonatas in A Major and E Major, numbered 81 and 84. Biber, of course, wrote much other music for (solo) violin, but the adjective ‘complete’ is accurate: it refers only to those violin sonatas in the collection of 1681.

This music is innovative, daring, complex, unpredictable and unashamedly joyful and played with an air of abandonment at times. Čičič and the Illyria Consort don’t miss the physical aspect of the music; several movements are in dance form, but they don’t allow themselves to be pushed or ‘typed’ into a genre corner.

By the time, for example, that you’ve become immersed in the opening Adagio movement of the E Major sonata, you might imagine yourself listening rapt to the musings of an aged professor speaking extempore and with quiet confidence about their specialist topic – so Biber’s thoughtful textures, harmonies and melodies have consideration without lugubriousness; examination and focus with neither languor nor longueur; three fingertips gently on the shoulder, no compulsion. For all its informality, the professor’s paragraphs (Biber’s pacing and music structure) are clear and refreshing – having been meticulously thought out beforehand.

This is not a recording to be missed, even though you may own one or more of the other ‘front-runners’. Čičič and his continuo prize intimacy and delicacy, which they are happy to expose to the closest of gazes. Indeed, the instruments are closely miked without risking an over-rhetorical aura. At times, there is also something of the ‘masterclass’ to the pacing of these performances. That is not to say that you sit expecting interruption; they are definitely uninterruptible. Rather, there is so much of moment and satisfying breadth for it not to matter that not everything is given up on a single reading. You are left feeling that, each time you listen to these performances, you’ll glean something fresh.

The acoustic of the church venue, is surprisingly dry and intimate, adding to the sense of presence which permeates these two hours of variety, impact, humour, stimulus and wonder. The dozen or so substantive pages of the accompanying booklet contain a short essay by Čičič on what Biber’s music means and what it does to him; track listings; there are notes on the music and some brief background on the players. This is a release to treasure.

Mark Sealey

Contents
Sonata Number 1 in A Major, C. 138
Sonata Number 2 in D Dorian Mode, C. 139
Sonata Number 3 in F Major, C. 140
Sonata Number 4 in D Major, C. 141
Sonata Number 84 in E Major
Sonata Number 5 in E minor, C. 142
Sonata Number 6 in C minor, C. 143
Sonata Number 7 in G Major, C. 144
Sonata Number 8 in A Major, C. 145
Sonata Number 81 in A Major

Performers
Elizabeth Kenny (theorbo); Siobhán Armstrong (harp); Stephen Devine (harpsichord, organ)

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