Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber devoted 15 sonatas for violin and basso continuo to the Joyful, the Sorrowful and the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary. Swiss baroque violinist Leyla Schayegh and German player of keyboard instruments Jörg Halubek present four stations of sonatas to make the Incarnation, Redemption, Suffering and Ascension of Jesus sound in mental images of meditation. Schayegh and Halubek juxtapose the four selected «Rosary Sonatas» with four sonatas for piano and violin by Johann Sebastian Bach, all in tune with the respectively preceding Biber sonata according to the key characterisation of Johann Mattheson, the music theoretician highly esteemed by Bach.

Mattheson postulated that A major rather «lends itself to laments and sad Passions». f minor, on the other hand – which Biber called the «Mount of Olives key» – evokes an inherently «deep and heavy anxiety of the heart». The «Crucifixion harmony», i.e. E major, appeared to Biber to imply «a fatal separation of the body and the soul» while he considered «intense» G major «an apt choice for serious as well as cheerful matters». The CD of Bach sonatas recorded by Schayegh and Halubek was awarded the «Diapason de l’année». «Leila Schayegh’s delivery has a lovely timbre, a flowering, singing note of great radiance», Rondo magazine wrote about her.