Holloway slipped from one character to another with remarkable grace, given that half the time the shift was from "serene Angel-violinist" to "Devil-fiddler-from-Hell" or back again. One minute, meltingly sweet, simple aria; next minute, elegant quasi-Corellian "variatio" on same (many large leaps; still graceful and poised); next minute after that, torrent of furious repeated 32nd notes about as decorous as machine-gun fire. In the "Preludios" he was magnificently free and capricious, and Sonata III's cliffhanger ending was stunning.

Holloway doesn't have quite the ornamental imagination of Andrew Manze (the first Baroque violinist to record this Biber set, and a major rival in all this music); there were a few distressingly lame embellishments. But he has everything else: fire, poise, and a near rock-solid technique. That was especially clear in the C-minor Sonata, No. VI, in which the violinist has to switch midway through the piece to a second violin with its top string tuned down a whole step, from E to D. Holloway drew an amazing, plangent sound out of the new fiddle (the lowered top string made it sound to my ears almost like a viola d'amore), and proceeded to dash around that top string as though the new tuning posed no problems at all.

Holloway also played a Schmelzer sonata from the set titled "Sonatae unarum fidium" — a piece in a slightly older style than the Biber sonatas', many short sections running seamlessly together, rather than discrete "set-pieces" like Biber's "Variatii." The other sonata on the program was Georg Muffat's sole violin sonata, a piece I've long been curious about but have never heard played before. It turns out to be all a fan of Muffat's orchestral works could anticipate — sweet on the outsides, in a Corellian sort of way (a lovely introductory slow movement on a descending four-note melody, reprised at the end of the piece), with a couple of joyous fast movements inside, and a slow movement at the center whose harmony I can only describe as "twisted." A phrase would progress using (say) what the ear would take to be a G-sharp, and then suddenly it would become an enharmonically-identical A-flat and the rest of the harmony would veer off in a completely new direction. The violin holds the pitch through each of these "twisting points," but Holloway marked them by moving the pitch to a different string each time this happened — a sort of timbral twitch to match the harmonic one.

Throughout the program Holloway was accompanied by both harpsichord (Lars Ulrik Mortensen, playing a very beautiful, and brand-new — 2002 — John Phillips instrument) and chamber organ (Aloysia Assenbaum). I've never heard this continuo combination used before, and I was amazed at how well it worked. You have the organ to sustain, the harpsichord to embellish, accent, glitter. And a pair of inventive keyboard players can come up with textures well beyond the reach of any other continuo pairing. Of course there are drawbacks, as we discovered during Biber's Sonata III at the end of the first half: the organ pitch had risen, the harpsichord pitch had fallen, and there was nothing to be done about it until intermission, when the instruments could be judiciously reconciled.

Each of the keyboard players got a solo turn. For Assenbaum it was two of Pachelbel's "Fugues on the Magnificat": one sprightly and straightforward, the other chromatic and introverted; her performances were neat and articulate. Mortensen played a Froberger Suite in C, beginning with a free-form Lament on the death of Emperor Ferdinand III. In this, and the three succeeding dance movements, it would be hard to say whether his control or his sensibility was the more impressive. The sense of gesture was a joy everywhere — the opening Lament moving from chord to chord with a mysterious volition, the first and second beats of the Sarabande "sunk into" almost physically, the other two, faster movements lively and essentially note-perfect, but never mechanical, full of infinitesimal rhythmic nuances. The upward scale at the end of the "Lament" (symbolic, as Mortensen told the audience, of the Emperor's ascent to heaven) was typical of the whole: even and controlled until the very last high C, ever-so-slightly delayed. "Exquisite," but not twee; and so too the rest of the Suite.

But any lingering twee-vapors would anyway have been incinerated instantly by the Bertali "Chiacona" that ended the program. For those who haven't encountered it, the ciaccona bass is sort of concentrated 17th-century musical fun: rinse ears; repeat as needed. Bertali's version of the ground is a little different from the "standard" one, and he runs it for a very long time (making side trips to various other keys in the process). It's a piece that in the wrong hands could grow very old, very fast.

Instead, on Sunday, it rocked. Holloway himself was spectacular, spitting fire in the virtuoso bits. But the real fun was in the keyboards. I don't think I've ever seen continuo players enjoying themselves with such almost indecent abandon. They were sly, they were brazen. Let the violin launch into little pairs of sixteenth notes separated by rests, and Mortensen and Assenbaum would enwreath them in a whole intricate, interlocking pattern of sixteenths. Let Holloway's line sigh chromatically, and one or the other of the keyboardists would mimic it from a comically unexpected starting pitch. Let him toss off a quick scale, and someone else would toss off a quick scale in response, in the same direction — or the other one. If there was musical fun to be found, they found it — communicating all the time by grinning glance and gesture, so that the most outrageous effects were precisely coordinated. No phrase too goofy, no gesture too audacious. It was a blast.