Compositions by Austrian seventeenth century composer
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber heard on this album are not the radical virtuoso music of the Rosary Sonatas or his other works that make use of such devices as scordatura or retuning. Mensa Sonora, the title of a
Biber collection excerpted here, means "the sonorous table," and these pieces by
Biber and other composers of his time were likely meant as background music for the meals of a noble patron. (This is apparently the reason for the photos of a pomegranate on the cover, but the design of the album as a whole is strikingly unappealing.) The works are ensemble sonatas or sonatas for a solo instrument with continuo in sequences of short movements (as short as 25 seconds). The spectacular passacaglia for solo violin often appended to theRosary Sonatas closes the program, and its surprise-filled, sparkling performance by
Sophie Gent is worth the price of the disc by itself. The Montreal historical-instrument ensemble
Masques contributes rather wiry but nicely balanced and coordinated readings of the rest of the music, much of which is quite obscure -- the rather lush works by
Schmelzer,
Kertzinger, and
Johann Michael Nicolai help fill out the picture of German music a half-century before
Bach. For the ordinary listener, the sonatas and the Mensa Sonora sections by
Biber will stand out from the rest of the music with their dramatic structural uses of virtuoso passagework, even if there is nothing here that is as conceptually staggering as his real masterworks. Analekta's sound is top notch, and the disc confirms Montreal's emergence as a major center for the performance of Baroque music.