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Title: Less is More
Review: To listen to Biber is to walk through a a Bizarro Baroque world, some sort of alternate musical past that isn't quite the same as that inhabited by the likes of Bach and Handel. It's a delicious experience, and this disc is part of it. Andrew Manze and The English Concert render this mass, which is largely a mix of chorus and trumpets. Closing out the disc is a set of string sonatas, which are performed in their way with the same degree of exquisite talent displayed in the mass. Though by turns crystalline and stirring and supple, the music on this disc is nonetheless somewhat spare, so don't come in expecting something thunderous.
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