Lautten Compagney - Misterio: Biber & Piazzolla (2018) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

The present album brings together works that may appear at first sight to have nothing in common: “serious” music and “light” music, Baroque music with an unequivocally Christian point of reference and 20th-century music that can trace its origins to street music: sonatas on the one hand and dance music on the other.

And yet the feature that is common both to the Baroque works and to the modern pieces that are included in this album is that they all explore the world of the ineffable, a world of mystery and spirituality. Both Biber and Piazzolla, moreover, assume that their interpreters will not just play the notes on the written page with the help of the performance markings that they find there but will enrich and expand the music by means of improvisation, in that way allowing it really to speak. In our own case, our use of period instruments brings out common features in Biber’s Rosary Sonatas and Piazzolla’s tangos that extend far beyond the present arrangement for violin, violoncello, lute and keyboard. Julia Schröder and Gerd Amelung developed this programme at the invitation and suggestion of the Boswil Summer Festival. Starting out from the idea of a crossover programme, they have created a meaningful whole out of Biber’s Rosary Sonatas and Piazzolla’s tangos and done so, moreover, in a way that can only be described as both gratifying and enriching. Both composers felt a fundamental need to express emotions – known as “affects” in Baroque music. In his capacity as concertmaster to the archbishop of Salzburg Biber left a sizeable body of sacred works that include his Rosary Sonatas. The fact that he performed them during Mass and at Vespers with Georg Muffat, the Salzburg court’s incumbent organist, and that he almost certainly played more than was simply notated provides present- day musicians with both an inspiration and a challenge.

As for Piazzolla, it was only when he began to study composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger that he felt encouraged to return to his Argentine roots and introduce the tango to the world of serious music. The result is well known: his tangos are characterful and emotionally charged pieces that are all powerfully related to the traditional tango but with an inherent compositional idea that listeners can understand. In the present programme Piazzolla’s tangos serve as meditations and commentaries on Biber’s music. Despite the disparities between them, their respective styles are both intensely emotional, while the affinities are further underlined by their identical instrumentation, the Baroque instruments enjoying a foray into the music of the 20th century and in that way demonstrating their usefulness in a period far removed from the one in which they originated.

Tracklist:
01. Rosary Sonata No. 1, C. 90, "The Annunciation"
02. Histoire du Tango: II. Cafe 1930
03. Rosary Sonata No. 2, C. 91, "Mary's Visit to Elizabeth"
04. Oblivion
05. Rosary Sonata No. 3, C. 92, "The Nativity"
06. Fuga y Misterio
07. Rosary Sonata No. 9, C. 98, "Carrying the Cross"
08. Jeanne y Paul
09. Rosary Sonata No. 10, C. 99, "The Crucifixion"
10. Harmonia Artificioso Ariosa: Partia V in G Minor, C. 66
11. La Muerte del Angel
12. Rosary Sonata No. 14, C. 103, "The Assumption of Mary"

Composers:
Biber, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von (1644-1704)
Piazzólla, Astor (1921-92)

Personnel:
Lautten Compagney
Julia Schröder (violin)
Wolfgang Katschner