Mystery Sonatas – Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Amandine Beyer/Rosas, Gli Incogniti

“You will hear my four-stringed lyre, tuned in fifteen different ways.” – Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber After the thirty Goldberg variations written by Johann Sebastian Bach, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker continues her choreographic trajectory with the fifteen “Mystery” or “Rosary” sonatas, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s best-known music. Biber’s virtuosic sonatas are a musical translation of the fifteen Sacred Mysteries of the life of the Virgin Mary. Each movement is divided into one of three cycles: five joyful, five sorrowful, and five glorious. Intrinsically religious and narrative, they are at the same time an invitation to dance. Attracted by the clarity of Biber’s structure and his numerical approach, De Keersmaeker examines the mystical and geometrical richness of this music and makes the sonatas her own in a choreography for six dancers. For this creation she renews her collaboration with violinist Amandine Beyer, with whom she previously made Partita 2 (2013) and The Six Brandenburg Concertos (2018). Beyer performs the Mystery Sonatas with her ensemble Gli Incogniti.