Presto recording of the week
4th July 2025

Gramophone Magazine
August 2025
Editor's choice

BBC Music Magazine
September 2025
Recording of the month

Brecon Baroque, Rachel Podger

Biber: Violin Sonata No. 5 in E minor
Biber: Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Major, C. 138
Biber: Violin Sonata No. 2 in D Minor, C. 139
Biber: Sonata violino solo representativa in A
Biber: Violin Sonata No. 6 in C minor
Biber: Violin Sonata No. 3 in F major

Following up her critically acclaimed recording of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber's Rosary Sonatas (CCSSA37315), violinist and musical director Rachel Podger leads Brecon Baroque on Just Biber, an album of Sonatas from Biber's 1681 collection Sonatae Violino Solo and his theatrical Sonata Representivo. These works are extremely virtuosic with extensive multiple stopping and dazzling passages of stylus fantasticus. In Biber's time, harmony was something cosmic, vibrating in a God-given resonance between human, instrumental and celestial bodies. Dedicated to Archbishop Maximilian Gandolf, the sonatas were not only designed to delight, but also potentially to balm and heal; Biber described the sonatas as a kind of prayer for the Archbishop's longevity and good health.

"Podger one of the finest of today's Baroque violinists takes up the challenge posed by Biber's 1681 sonata collection with élan. Her affinity with the material allows a free and spontaneous delivery a flexibility her continuo partners from Brecon Baroque follow to the dot." - BBC Music Magazine, September 2025