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Donald Macleod explores the music, and what little is known of the life, of Baroque master Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. Today, Biber’s music for church and stage.

Biber is known to posterity primarily as a composer for the violin, yet much of his time in Salzburg was spent in the production of ecclesiastical and theatrical music. Of his stage works, including at least three operas and fifteen ‘school dramas’, only one has survived, his opera Arminio, or Chi la dura la vince – ‘He who endures, wins’. Its score has certainly endured, but the opera, despite many fine moments, is rarely heard nowadays. Many of Biber’s masterly sacred works were composed with the cavernous spaces of Salzburg Cathedral in mind, and make full use of the spatial possibilities afforded by that monumental building.

Arminio, or Chi la dura la vince: Act I, Scene 1 (extract)
Salzburger Hofmusik
Wolfgang Brunner, conductor

Psalmi de B. M. Virgine, from Vesperae longiores ac breviores, 1693: Dixit dominus; Laudate pueri; Laetatus sum; Nisi Dominus; Lauda Jerusalem; Magnificat.
Cantus Cölln
Konrad Junghänel, conductor

Arminio, or Chi la dura la vince: Act I, Scene 7)
Gotthold Schwarz, baritone (Arminio)
Salzburger Hofmusik
Wolfgang Brunner, conductor

Arminio, or Chi la dura la vince: Act II, Scene 10 (extract)
Barbara Schlick, soprano (Giulia)
Salzburger Hofmusik
Wolfgang Brunner, conductor

Arminio, or Chi la dura la vince: Act III, Scene 9
Gerd Kenda, bass (Tiberio)
Hermann Oswald, tenor (Germanico)
Markus Forster, alto (Vitellio)
Florian Mehltretter, bass (Seiano)
Salzburger Hofmusik
Wolfgang Brunner, conductor

Litaniae Sancto Josepho
Cantus Cölln
Concerto Palatino
Konrad Junghänel, conductor

Producer: Chris Barstow for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales