Biber has been such a feature of Meret Lüthi and Les Passions de l’Âme’s recorded output of recent years that it has felt like an inevitability that the Rosary Sonatas should fall into our laps before too long. In fact we’ve already had a taster, because their 2020 Biber and Schmelzer album (DHM, 10/20) came with the set’s cumulative G minor solo Passagalia, ‘Guardian Angel’, tucked in. Interestingly, that previous appearance was a genuine taster, too, because while 99.9 per cent of this new offering was recorded over seven days in January 2022 at Dorfmühle Lehrberg, as a co-production between BR‑Klassik and Radio SRF 2 Kultur – following three live concerts – the ‘Guardian Angel’ is one and the same as appeared on that 2020 album, recorded in September 2019 in Zurich.

The join between No 15’s concluding Sarabande and the solo Passagalia, though, is smoothly done – less audible from an engineering perspective than is heard on Rachel Podger’s Gramophone Award-winning take, although not quite as seamless in every respect as heard recently from Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti. Plus, while I can hear what Mark Seow meant when, reviewing that earlier album in these pages, he suggested Lüthi wasn’t coaxing quite the tonal depth he would have liked out of her 1659 Jacob Stainer violin, its light, silvery introspection spins its own atmosphere, with its contrasts between hesitantly holding back and urgent push. As for the rest, a comparatively light, sharp-edged tone from Lüthi is indeed one of the distinguishing features throughout (compared to Podger’s more sonorous tonal depth or Beyer’s more cloaked nuttiness), as is a generous acoustic, and an enjoyably varied ensemble sound from Les Passions de l’Âme, its players nicely present in the balance alongside Lüthi and its many colours including that of the zither. To hear its capacity for rich fullness being harnessed as a brilliant counterfoil to Lüthi’s more astringent luminosity, head to the opening of Sonata No 13, ‘The Descent of the Holy Spirit’, Lüthi expertly building a crescendo from atmospheric stillness to ballsy fire. Equally attention-grabbing is the joyful, rhythmically lively noise they make for the Aria of No 14, ‘The Assumption of the Virgin’.

The Rosary Sonatas is an increasingly crowded field, and brilliantly so. For me, these readings don’t quite outdo Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti’s freewheeling dancing ease or the nuanced beauty heard from Podger. But frankly, comparisons at this level are personal and feel a bit like hair-splitting. This is a fine recording of its own separate mind, and few also come with such a generous accompanying booklet – it’s a rare treat to have reproductions of the original manuscript’s copper engraving medallions by Paul Seel, complete with detailed explanations.