H.I.F. Biber and J.J. Vilsmaÿr also appeared in the recent past a bit secluded and, let’s face it, they had been confined somehow to the shadows by all of us, dazzled by the marvelous expansion of musical art from the end of the 18th century throughout the 19th century with unimaginable peaks and then by the persistent search for new “avenidas” in the 1900s to the present day. But in the art of the violin - an instrument of recent creation and of absolute greatness - we had reached at the end of the 1600s, with the bold progresses of the Austrian violin school, as well as the Italian and the German ones, great achievements indeed. Biber, Schmelzer, Muffat, and Vilsmaÿr had risen high, thus inducing a persistent influence on their times and almost throughout the 1700s.

The music of Austrian baroque composers, as it reached a point of high perfection, was proposed in its time to act as a musical pendant of secular ceremonies as well as convivial moments in which the “allowed satisfaction”, that is the enjoying of food, took place. It was exalted even more by the careful counterpoint of the sounds that were sometimes of joy, of support, of crossing over borders. While for greater glory the attention to the divine service was registered in the same composition, if need be, with a wealth of sounds intended this time to promote the ascent of the soul towards the divine Revelation.

This programme of violin solos is performed by Liliana Bernardi.