Amazon.comThe 17th-century Austrian composer Heinrich Biber is remembered today for his extraordinary solo violin music--collections such as the Mystery Sonatas. He wrote a number of large-scale instrumental works and choral pieces as well, but their reputation is not as high. They include a lot of grand gestures for brass, but they tend to be harmonically static and often seem long-winded. So Konrad Junghänel and his superb musicians have really achieved something by making the works on this disc sound so appealing. The Litaniae de Sancto Josepho ("Litanies of Saint Joseph") and the two sonatas have a bit of harmonic variety and a lot of exciting instrumental color, with penetrating strings, grave trombones, and brilliant trumpets alongside their mellower relatives, cornetts. Junghänel gives the music a rhythmic spring that holds a listener's interest--and probably brings a smile to the face. Alongside Biber's music on this disc is a similarly scored Mass by Georg Muffat, a contemporary and colleague of Biber. While Biber's music seems very much of the 17th century, parts of Muffat's Mass have a marchlike pulse, brief solo passages, and simple fugues that prefigure early Haydn. --Matthew Westphal