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Barry Guy,

Maya Homburger

and Jeff Reilly

At the Church of St. George

the Martyr, in Toronto on Sunday

What is it, I wonder, about the music of Heinrich Biber (1644-1704) that tugs so insistently on 21st-century imaginations? The Austrian-based composer was the foremost violin virtuoso of his day; today he is best known for his 16 so-called Rosary, or Mystery, Sonatas, which follow the life of the Virgin Mary in extraordinarily colourful, emotionally powerful musical canvases that explore “alternative” tunings of the violin and burst with improvisatory spirit of the age.

At the instigation of Canadian violinist Geoffrey Nuttall, Montreal-based Chris Paul Harman has written a piece inspired by the sublime Passacaglia for solo violin that closes the Rosary Sonatas; a revised version of that piece, called Postludio a rovescio, won the 2007 Léger Prize.

On Sunday Toronto's Music Gallery opened its season with a Biber-inspired concert presented by an international trio that straddles the baroque and improvising worlds with rare solidity. Maya Homburger is a Swiss baroque violinist who has pursued a parallel interest in new music throughout her career. British bassist Barry Guy is a wild improviser/composer but he has also played principal bass in the Academy of Ancient Music. They were joined by Canadian bass clarinetist Jeff Reilly, who contributed welcome moments of repose and reflection to the evening.

The ninth-century hymn Veni Creator Spiritus gently invoked the spirit of creation off the top: As the violinist and clarinetist wandered around the church, the hymn wandered into an improvisation, dissolving into scrabbling bowings and alluring stabs of darkness, then surfing brief waves of the original hymn. It was over in a flash, but you had gotten the measure of this ensemble's maturity: Their improvisations were concise with none of the self-indulgence that plagues the genre; their transformations of material richly appealing; their blurring of genres expert.

The opening section of Biber's Annunciation Sonata (the first of the Rosaries) unfolded more or less as written; then they cut loose: In a pizzicato outburst, Guy threw out occasional mouthfuls of Biber like a fairytale giant spitting out the human he had just devoured.

Numerous pieces by Guy and Reilly followed, all of them involving improvisation. But that opening section of the Biber, with its alternation of fluttering passagework – that would be the angel Gabriel descending – and declamatory passages – the angel and the Virgin Mary conversing – hovered over the proceedings. In the first of five Beckett-inspired Fizzles improvised by Guy, for instance, a human-like voice called out eerily in the midst of deliriously manic outbursts.

The solo Fizzles were the highlight of the concert, as bows, sticks, drumsticks, even a paintbrush went flying around the bass (and the stage): One seemed to be watching a one-man emergency-room crew desperately attempting to resuscitate a bass he mistook for a human.

Reilly's Klangfarben Waltz was also memorable, with its sharp shards of musical colour – again one had the feeling of old music having been put through a shredder.

It was lovely to hear Homburger turn the baroque violin loose in contemporary sounds and idioms – harmonics, slides, raspy bowings near the bridge. I was disappointed by her “regular” Biber, though. For all her baroque equipment – gut strings, 17th-century style bows and a real rarity: two 18th-century violins with original necks – her approach was essentially modern. The music's rhetorical shapes were muddied; Gabriel's arrival was all blaring trumpets, with little flutter of wings or heart.

Still, Sunday night's concert was not just an interesting experiment: It was a signpost. For I am convinced that if “classical” music is to survive as a vital art form, its students need once again to be trained to improvise, both in Biber's language, and in musical languages of our time.

Special to The Globe and Mail