I have the MAK recording and I absolutely love it.  Enormous, full-blooded, heady, committed playing.  Sometimes I yearn for a hint of subtle delicacy here and there, but there's no denying its compelling passion.

On the other hand, I don't know the other recording.  I have it on excellent authority that it's very very good - and has some unusual keyboard in the A major if I remember correctly?  I'll have to have a look around for it myself.

Sorry - this probably hasn't been very helpful...

The "Rare Fruits Council" sounds like some kind of think-tank which never meets, but instead funnels campaigning expenses to politicians seeking high office?

The Rare Fruits Council recording is absolutely marvellous. Spectacularly virtuosic but indeed not lacking in subtlety. They've used a church organ for reasons outlined very convincingly in the booklet - they contend that the chamber organs we often use nowadays are more a matter of convenience than historical practice (with a supporting quotation from our man Mattheson again... "small domestica organs are for amateurs who like listening to a chorale and joining in, but they are not for use in concerts", although he was probably writing a bit after Biber's death). Anyway, the sound is splendid. Even the use of the Cimbelstern stop.

The string playing is quite blinding. Quantz said that music of that period looked faster than it sounded since the hemidemisemquavers were performed at a moderate speed. Mersenne in 1636 on the other hand said that the upper limit was 16 notes per second, so if Quantz thought that was moderate then I'd hate to hear fast. On the other hand I never have the feeling that anything they're doing is getting in the way of the music - only that the music is speaking through and with them, which for me is an interpretative touchstone.

There aren't many recordings that I find satisfying enough not to even seek out others of the same piece but this is one of them - I've loved many things of MAK (actually here in Köln that normally means the Museum für Angewandte Kunst...), not least Goebel's recording of the Biber Rosary Sonatas (which is another of those entirely satisfying recordings!), but I'm not sure even they could quite match this.

I'm as big a fan of Goebel and friends as the next man, but that RFC recording is exceptionally beautiful and would be the first CD I'd play to anyone who asked me something like "who is this Biber guy and why are you so interested in his music?" or "there wasn't really any good chamber music before Bach, was there?" or suchlike. There was also a recording (the first complete one) of this set of pieces by Tafelmusik, which was a fine effort too but not on this level I think.

I'm an enormous fan of Goebel and friends (and I seem to be the next man) - in particular that Tafelmusik set, in fact, which is one of my constant companions, and their Brandenburgs which are still my first choice for a Brandenburg set and have been since they appeared. And the Rosary thing. And their recording of cantatas from the Bach family before JS. And, and, and...

But RFC is still finger-lickin' good.

Indeed I'm not quite sure I could cope if the MAK version turned my crank any harder than the RFC. It might be too much to bear.

Which is completely clear from your post should one bother to read it properly... oops!

In fact I also have that recording and, well, yes, nothing against it but RFC are exalted company indeed.

The old one would probably have been Eduard Melkus, whose tone isn't the kind of thing we'd now associate with "period playing" though it was pretty radical in its time, and whose continuo realisations are wildly ornate and complicated. I still love it though. It did reappear on CD for a short time in the 90s. Otherwise I would recommend Reinhard Goebel, if that's still available, although there are now so many I can't pretend to have kept up.