Biber: The Rosary Sonatas

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber was a prodigious composer of sacred music, but his modern reputation rests primarily on his music for the violin, on which he was himself a virtuoso performer. This cycle of 15 sonatas for violin and continuo has endured in popularity due to its unusual structure, its technical demands, and its unique sound. It’s organized around the 15 “mysteries of the rosary”; each piece has a different theme (“Christ on the Mount of Olives,” “The Ascension,” etc.) and each requires the violin’s strings to be tuned in a different configuration. This recording features the great baroque violinist Andrew Manze.