Alice Pierot - Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber: Mysterien Sonaten (2003) 2CD

This performance by violinst Alice Pierot and Les veilleurs de Nuit is part of a remarkable series from France's Alpha label, pairing mostly Baroque works with paintings of the era. The package for this disc shows an image of Mary awaiting the Annunciation, painted around 1475 by the Neapolitan Antonello da Messina. It's two centuries older than the Biber cycle, and it's quite simple – the painting has nothing of the wildly ornate, extreme, experimental quality of Biber's music, which makes extensive use of scordatura or unorthodox violin tuning. The point made by art historian Denis Grenier in his notes, however, is that painting was a powerful statement of subjectivity or interiority, qualities certainly relevant to Biber. Of the available performances of the Mystery Sonatas, Pierot's lies close to the subjective, emotional end of the scale. She emphasizes the directly programmatic aspects of the work – check out the lashing quality of her Scourging at the Pillar sonata, for example – and the slow introductions to various sonatas are treated with a high degree of rhythmic freedom.

Tracklist:

CD 1:
Mystery Sonatas (16), for violin & basso continuo (or solo violin), C. 90-105
1. L'annonciation [05:21]
2. La Visite A Elisabeth [04:30]
3. La Naissance Du Christ [06:35]
4. La Presentation Au Temple [07:31]
5. Jesus Au Temple [06:26]
6. Le Jardin Des Oliviers [07:19]
7. La Flagellation [07:19]
8. La Couronne D'epines [06:29]

CD 2:
Mystery Sonatas (16), for violin & basso continuo (or solo violin), C. 90-105
1. Le Chemin De Croix [08:01]
2. La Crucifixion [10:11]
3. La Resurrection [07:12]
4. L'ascension [06:52]
5. L'esprit Saint [07:13]
6. L'assomption [08:16]
7. Le Couronnement De La Vierge [11:55]
8. L'ange Gardien [08:22]

Musicians:
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber - Composer
Alice Pierot - Conductor, Violin
Les Veilleurs de Nuit - Ensemble