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Fanfare Magazine: 38:2 (11-12/2014)
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Ondine
ODE12432D
Code-barres / Barcode : 0761195124321 (ID434)
"Recommended as one of the best of the complete sets currently available".
The last generation of musicians has promoted Biber’s Mystery (Rosary) Sonatas from the ranks of curiosities to full-blown canonicity; and despite the difficulties of performing them (at least in concert) with their 15 different tunings (or mistunings), complete recordings continue to appear with the regularity of the standard repertoire in the 1950s. Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen-Pilch (apparently playing one violin—an anonymous 17th-century violin with a lion’s-head replacing the scroll; Jacob Stainer’s violins, which Biber himself played, occasionally feature such an ornate head) and her ensemble, Battaglia (Annamari Pöhlö, harpsichord and portative organ; Eero Palviainen, theorbo, archlute, Baroque guitar, and, in “The Crucifixion,” organ; and Mika Suihkonen, violone), recorded them in Karjaa Church, in Finland, in August 2013. The booklet, for which Sirkka-Liisa’s husband, Zbigniev Pilch, provided the notes, reproduces the engravings of the mysteries that grace the surviving copy.
Kaakinen-Pilch’s playing in the Praeludium of the “Annunciation” explores a wealth of rhetorical effects, both tonal and metric, and the second, with its pedals and variations, takes a similarly protean expressive approach. The recorded sound captures the instruments up close, surrounded with reverberation to tame any harshness; it transmits blessedly little snorting or heavy breathing. The violinist graces the Allaman of the “Visitation” with fleet but discreet ornamentation, and underneath her the continuo group continuously explores timbral variety while bracing up the work’s structural elements. The dark tonality of “The Nativity” might be explained by the darkness of the painting in Salzburg’s Aula Magna, where the works had likely been performed; but the notes also point out the connection between a somber Nativity and the Crucifixion in Eastern Christianity. However that may be, Kaakinen-Pilch plays the sonata with a vivacity that should dispel for most listeners whatever shadows might tend to linger. Chaconnes pop up throughout these works (as they do in, say, the sonatas of Pandolfi-Mealli); such a ground bass constitutes the whole sonata, “Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple,” with Kaakinen-Pilch and the ensemble exploring tonally and virtuosically its variety of Affekten. “The Finding of Our Lord in the Temple” comprehends four movements in a sort of suite: a Praeludium, an Allaman, a Guigue, and a “Saraban-Double.” That Kaakinen-Pilch plays the gigue-like third of these with a highly pointed rhythm may come as no surprise to those who have listened to the first four sonatas (but smoothing the rhythms into triplets might be an alternative, at least upon repetitions).
The Sorrowful Mysteries begin (in “The Agony in the Garden”) with a Lamento that features, in the first part of Kaakinen-Pilch’s performance, an affecting interplay between the violin and the violone. She plays almost piquantly—but then more solemnly—in the third movement, the figurations of which some have suggested represents drops of blood. An almost light-hearted Allamanda accompanies “The Scourging at the Pillar,” but Kaakinen-Pilch lends it a weight (despite pinched articulation) that counterbalances its seeming levity. She brings the same marked articulation to the final dance and its variation, which again render so imposingly. In “The Crowning with Thorns,” with its first movement’s sprightly concluding Presto, the ensemble launches into another compound movement that combines vivacity and, in these readings, articulation as sharp as a bed of nails, followed by joyous running figuration. (Do these sonatas actually represent specific events?—the case has, in fact, been argued convincingly on both sides.) Kaakinen-Pilch takes a more somber approach to “The Carrying of the Cross,” although she’s vibrant in the Corrente and should raise goose bumps in the finale. Those who argue that the sonatas don’t make specific references to particular events in the life of Christ might take “The Crucifixion” as a case in point: The work appeared later under Johann Heinrich Schmelzer’s authorship as a work depicting the victory over the Turks, featuring blows with swords rather than the hammering of nails. However that may be, Kaakinen-Pilch and the ensemble hammer feverishly in the Praeludium and play commandingly in the following aria and variation.
The Glorious Mysteries begin with “The Resurrection,” which employs the set’s signature device—the two middle strings “crossed” over each other, making playing the piece seem like fiddling upside down on occasion (making string crossings go in the wrong directions). The notes suggest that the hymn, Surrexit Christus hodie, may be a tribute to underground evangelical Protestantism; but the ensemble endows it with a sense of quasi-liturgical ecstasy. “The Ascension” includes a movement in imitation of a fanfare for trumpet and drums (Aria Tubicinum); Kaakinen-Pilch and the ensemble make it lighter and slyer than expected. The “Descent of the Holy Ghost” begins in Kaakinen-Pilch’s performance with intensity unparalleled in my experience of it: The flurry of wings has grown into a veritable roar. That Sonata leads to four movements suggesting a virtual suite. During a rehearsal for a performance I organized, I recall overhearing the theorbo player and gambist calling the aria of the “Assumption” a passacaglia or chaconne, the movement that just wouldn’t end, although it’s one of the most diverse treatments of a ground bass in the entire set. In it, Kaakinen-Pilch and the ensemble pour out an exuberant and seemingly never-ending (in the favorable sense) harvest of musical ideas. The final sonata, “The Coronation,” combines here a stately beginning, a highly serious aria resembling the finale of Handel’s Messiah, and, finally, a rhetorical figure representing a sparkling halo of stars.
Then there’s the Passagalia for solo violin. At 9:18, Kaakinen-Pilch’s performance may be faster than I’d prefer (I played it at the end of the sorrowful mysteries, requiring a complete rethinking of its content), but almost everybody takes it at least that fast, and her reading is sonorous, rewardingly varied in its bowings, and highly inflected throughout.
Overall,
Kaakinen-Pilch bites sharply into the string, yet produces a tone not
exceptionally abrasive; the ensemble, at times mixing timbres with startling
effectiveness, generally adopts her penchant for pronounced articulation but
also, as noted, her predilection for timbral variety. For those who favor a
strongly spiritual and rhetorical approach (as, for example in Andrew
Manze’s readings) rather than a more secular and virtuosic one (as, for
example, in Monica Huggett’s) to these works, Ondine’s release should be
deeply satisfying. Recommended as one of the best of the complete sets
currently available.
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