New. Just Biber
Brecon Baroque, Rachel Podger
Awards:
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Presto Recording of the Week, 4th July 2025
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Gramophone Magazine, August 2025, Editor's Choice
Podger and her gang serve up kaleidoscopically imaginative pleasure after pleasure here. Her preludes come with especial composed-as-it-goes freedom, often with a really mercurial otherworldliness...
New. Just Biber
Brecon Baroque, Rachel Podger
Purchase product
Awards:
-
Presto Recording of the Week, 4th July 2025
-
Gramophone Magazine, August 2025, Editor's Choice
Podger and her gang serve up kaleidoscopically imaginative pleasure after pleasure here. Her preludes come with especial composed-as-it-goes freedom, often with a really mercurial otherworldliness...
About
Following up her critically acclaimed recording of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber's Rosary Sonatas (CCSSA37315), violinist and musical director Rachel Podger leads Brecon Baroque on Just Biber, an album of Sonatas from Biber's 1681 collection Sonatae Violino Solo and his theatrical Sonata Representivo. These works are extremely virtuosic with extensive multiple stopping and dazzling passages of stylus fantasticus. In Biber's time, harmony was something cosmic, vibrating in a God-given resonance between human, instrumental and celestial bodies. Dedicated to Archbishop Maximilian Gandolf, the sonatas were not only designed to delight, but also potentially to balm and heal; Biber described the sonatas as a kind of prayer for the Archbishop's longevity and good health.
Contents and tracklist
Spotlight on this release
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Biber's 1681 sonatas from Rachel Podger and Bojan Čičić
Two sparkling performances of the Bohemian violinist-composer's most demanding and virtuosic sonatas, the 1681 Sonatae Violino Solo, come along at once!
Awards and reviews
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Presto Recording of the Week4th July 2025
-
Gramophone MagazineAugust 2025Editor's Choice
August 2025
Podger and her gang serve up kaleidoscopically imaginative pleasure after pleasure here. Her preludes come with especial composed-as-it-goes freedom, often with a really mercurial otherworldliness to her phrasing and metre.
4th July 2025
Podger has a trick up her sleeve; the utterly joyous Sonata representativa... He pushes the violin to its limits by - frankly - mucking about with it, over- and under-tightening the strings and playing with all sorts of extended techniques to achieve the Baroque equivalent of Old MacDonald’s farm. It makes the Four Seasons look timid and is unashamedly silly - if you listen to no other early music this year, I heartily recommend you give this a go.
26th June 2025
The pieces are all characterised by their extreme technical difficulty, and especially by their extensive use of scordatura, when individual violin strings are tuned differently from usual. Podger copes with all these challenges quite brilliantly, including imitating the sounds of animals in the Sonata Representivo; she brings an expressive freedom that never takes too many liberties, but remains true to the spirit of the music.
Podger’s wonderful album, pairing her dynamic fiddling with equally colourful playing from members of Brecon Baroque.
