Sumna is the third solo album of Kivie Cahn-Lipman (founding cellist of the International Contemporary Ensemble, founder of baroque band ACRONYM and HiP Scottish ensemble Makaris, and co-founder of viol consorts LeStrange and Science Ficta). Here he offers first recordings of new cello solos written for him by Daijana Wallace, Édgar Guzmán, and Vincent Calianno, along with a modern classic by Caroline Shaw and a multitracked cello octet by Kaija Saariaho. Cahn-Lipman's passion for early music emerges both in the opening track (a fresh take on H.I.F. von Biber's solo violin Passacaglia, a seventeenth-century masterpiece), and the title track (a commission from Mario Diaz de Leon for unaccompanied viola da gamba).

These 2004 recordings,, reissued by Oehms Classics, with the renowned Clemencic Consort conducted by René Clemencic include works by the important composers Johann Joseph Fux and Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. In the selection of Fux's works, cosmopolitan skill meets French and Italian styles with southern German tradition. Graceful in the graceful pieces by Biber, magnificently representative in the solemn ones, this recording with a varied program offers an authentic portrait of one of the most important masters of baroque music. The Clemencic Consort under the direction of René Clemencic is one of the most renowned ensembles for music from the Middle Ages to the Baroque period with a focus on authentic interpretations. Numerous award-winning recordings bear witness to the work of the ensemble.

REVIEW:

The first CD contains ballets and sonatas for trumpet and strings by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. The highly virtuosic music is heard in opulent and magnificent ensemble playing. Baroque opulence also abounds in the works of Johann Joseph Fux. The works assembled here impressively demonstrate the composer's versatility. The Clemencic Consort emphasizes this with a variety of tonal color and dynamic contrasts, fully exploiting the dance-like element of Fux’s music.

-- Pizzicato

Biber’s ‘Rosary Sonatas’ for violin and basso continuo stand alone in the violin literature and in music history, offering a unique combination of programmatic material and the use of scordatura (tuning a string instrument differently than the standard tuning). Consisting of fifteen sonatas for violin and basso continuo, and a closing Passacaglia for solo violin, the cycle was presented by Biber to his employer, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, in a handsome manuscript sometime before 1687. Through the copper engravings inserted at the head of each sonata in the manuscript depicting key moments in the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary, the music has become associated with the Catholic Mysteries of the Rosary. As the manuscript is missing its title page, the collection has become known under a variety of names: the Rosary, Mystery, Biblical or even Copper-Engraving Sonatas. The moods and emotions of this highly expressive music range from Mary's wonderment at the Annunciation to the agony of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, the crucifixion and the subsequent resurrection, celebrated in a fantasy on the hymn Surrexit Christus hodie. Through the use of fifteen different tunings of the violin – one for each of the fifteen sonatas before the return to standard tuning in the closing Passacaglia – Biber achieves a variety of timbres, which combined with his highly imaginative treatment of the violin makes for absorbing listening. Appearing for the first time on BIS, the Greek-American violinist Ariadne Daskalakis has made a number of previous recordings, on baroque as well as modern violin. She is here supported by her fellow members in Ensemble Vintage Köln, a Cologne-based group of musicians specialized in baroque music. As a coupling to Biber's Rosary Sonatas – with a duration of almost 120 minutes – the ensemble has chosen to include the only extant violin sonata by George Muffat, Biber's colleague in the service of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg.

The winner of numerous prestigious prizes, including several Gramophone Awards, the vocal ensemble Vox Luminis, founded by Lionel Meunier in 2004, is now regarded as a benchmark in the interpretation of the great works of German Baroque music. Its unfailingly faithful and lively approach to such masters as Bach, Buxtehude and Scheidt has made the group’s reputation, but this new recording features a major work by Heinrich Biber, a composer hitherto absent from its discography: his Requiem in F minor for 14 voices, composed around 1692. The program is completed by two sacred works by Christoph Bernhard (Herr, nun lässest du deinen Diener in Friede fahren and Tribularer si nescirem misericordias tuas), two pieces by Johann Joseph Fux, and the Sonata a 6 in A minor of Johann Michael Nicolai. This recording marks the beginning of a collaboration between Vox Luminis and another internationally renowned ensemble, the Freiburger Barockorchester, heard here in its Consort formation.

REVIEW:

The Requiem in F minor is a sober, transparent piece in a rather conservative style, and the warm, direct performance here by the Vox Luminis vocal ensemble and the small Freiburger BarockConsort is optimal. These ensembles, though separate, have worked together for a long time, and the smoothness of their work under Vox Luminis director Lionel Meunier is notable. Another attraction for hardcore Baroque listeners is the group of other works that frame the Biber, none of them often heard even in early music circles. A typically strong outing from this unique pairing makes even a quite obscure repertory accessible to general audiences.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

Heinrich Biber’s astonishingly powerful and deeply emotional Mystery Sonatas represent a triumph of Baroque invention. Boston Baroque’s Christina Day Martinson delivers a technical tour de force, as she navigates the virtuosic challenges presented by the fiendishly demanding changing scordatura. Boston Classical Review described her live performance as ‘a flourish of technical complexity and musical wizardry’, whilst the Boston Globe wrote, “Day Martinson…didn't just survive, she triumphed.” The adventurous use of six baroque violins in fifteen different tunings creates otherworldly soundscapes that result in a deeply moving and glorious listening experience. This highly disorientating practice reaches its pinnacle in Sonata XI ('The Resurrection') where the middle two strings are crossed over each other both in the peg box and behind the bridge, so that one can literally see a cross on the violin. The fifteen sonatas have been traditionally grouped into three sets of five: five joyful mysteries, five sorrowful mysteries, and five glorious mysteries. Boston Baroque’s founder Martin Pearlman plays organ and harpsichord, with Michael Leopold on theorbo and guitar and Michael Unterman on cello.

Recorded in the beautiful acoustics of the parish church of Hallstatt (Austria), where Gunar Letzbor was born, this personal and dramatic interpretation of Biber’s most popular work, usually referred to today as the ‘Mistery’ or ‘Rosary’ sonatas, comes back after years of absence. Gunar Letzbor makes his journey through the ‘mysteries’ or events in the life of the Virgin Mary using two different violins and accompanied by no fewer than six musicians playing kaleidoscopic combinations of harpsichord, organ, lute, archlute, two bass viols and double bass - a big continuo group which enhances and intensifies the changing moods of the cycle.