Ricordo "Virtuoso in the Making - Biber" HDCD

Baroque ensemble Ricordo's debut album with Linn Records which received rave reviews.

'In Ricordo we have a new Baroque group of enormous promise.' Gramophone

'Ricordo sails through the sunny lyrical passages, the darkly-passionate passacaglias and the fiendish figuration with assurance and panache.' Early Music Today

The members of Ricordo came together in 1997 to share their enthusiasm for the music of the 17th century. They focused initially on the links between Austria and Italy and the flamboyant instrumental genre known as Stylus Phantasticus, performing violin sonatas by Marini, Pandolfi Mealli, Walther, Schmelzer and Biber. Their repertoire now takes in English and North German composers too. This is Ricordo's debut - it offers an insight into the early compositions by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. Biber's (1644 - 1704) music is amazingly different from the more commonly heard baroque style, definitely far more fanciful. The nature of his compositions is essentially extreme improvisation on paper, free and unpredictable explorations of themes or just abstract fantasies. Ricordo play their programmes entirely from memory in order to free themselves from the printed page and to enhance communication between themselves and the audience. "Ricordo" is the Italian word for "Memory". 

Tracklisting

1. Pastorella
2. Sonata in E Major – Adagio
3. Sonata in E Major - Aria & Variation: Adagio
4. Sonata à 3, per 2 Violini e Trombone
5. Fantasia
6. Fantasia - Gigue & Variation: Minuet
7. Passacaglia for solo lute
8. Pastorella à 2 Violini
9. Sonata in C Minor
10. Sonata in A Major - Adagio/Presto
11. Sonata in A Major - Aria e Variation