Romanesca: Andrew Manze, Baroque violin; Nigel North, lute and theorbo; John Toll, harpsichord and organ
Harmonia Mundi HMU 907134.35 (2 CDs)
Biber’s Mystery Sonatas reveal the composer as a religious visionary. The eight violin sonatas published in 1681 introduce another Biber: the swaggering virtuoso, improviser and entertainer. These works can be reflective and deeply expressive, but they are just as likely to break into a dance, a volley of passagework or some outrageous technical display. Biber seems determined to discover everything the violin can do—and then make it do something more.
Andrew Manze is an ideal guide to this unpredictable music. He has the necessary technique, but more importantly he possesses the right temperament. He treats the sonatas not as museum pieces but as living performances whose direction can change from one phrase to the next. Tempos shift, ornaments flash past and lyrical passages suddenly give way to explosive runs. Yet the playing never sounds undisciplined. Manze’s freedom rests on a firm understanding of Biber’s musical rhetoric.
The violin tone is wiry, colorful and immediate. Manze can produce a sweet singing line when the music asks for one, but he is not afraid of rougher sounds. Chords bite, bass notes growl and rapid passages sometimes seem tossed off with almost insolent ease. In lesser hands such playing could become mannered. Here it conveys the restless, improvisatory quality at the heart of the music.
Nigel North and John Toll are full partners rather than discreet accompanists. North’s lute and theorbo give the bass line warmth and rhythmic lift, while Toll moves between harpsichord and organ to change the weight and color of the continuo. Romanesca sounds like three musicians reacting to one another in the moment. The slight adjustments of tempo and mood have the natural give-and-take of an exceptionally good jazz group.
The additional works make this much more than a straightforward presentation of the 1681 collection. In the Sonata representativa, Biber imitates a nightingale, cuckoo, frog, hen, rooster, quail and cat before finishing with a musketeer’s march and an Allemande. Manze plays these animal portraits with wit but does not reduce the sonata to a string of party tricks. The music remains coherent even at its most eccentric.
La Pastorella brings a welcome moment of pastoral repose, while the two unaccompanied pieces reveal different sides of Biber’s imagination. Nigel North’s solo-lute Passacaglia is poised and intimate. The final Passacaglia for unaccompanied violin—the Guardian Angel movement from the Mystery Sonatas—is something else entirely. Manze builds it patiently over its repeating four-note pattern until the work seems to stand outside its own period, pointing forward toward Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas.
The close recording gives the instruments considerable presence, which suits Romanesca’s physical and energetic approach. At times the sound can feel a little bright, but it preserves every detail of Manze’s articulation and every change in the continuo.
This remains one of the great Biber recordings. The combination of scholarly understanding, technical fearlessness and spontaneous enjoyment makes the music sound newly invented. Manze does not merely play Biber’s notes; he recreates the dangerous excitement that must have surrounded the composer’s own performances.
Essential listening for anyone interested in the Baroque violin—and enormous fun besides.
