I love music.
I write about the music I like and have purchased for the benefit of better understanding it and sharing my preferences with others.
I write about the music I like and have purchased for the benefit of better understanding it and sharing my preferences with others.
biberfan is a site primarily devoted to the love of baroque and classical music. My name is John Hendron, and maybe like you, I’m a fan of the music of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. Since I was very young, I developed interests around hi-fi, baroque music, and performance. My work today is focused in non-profit education, but I also have degrees in music and music education. biberfan is an outlet for my own interest in helping others discover what’s so great about music from 1600-1800.
I began to study the piano at age 5 and later adopted the trombone as my primary instrument.
In college, when prompted to create a new online handle for an account, I chose the name “biberfan", knowing that there were already so many fans of Bach. This is where I studied both conducting and composition, including pieces that we might call “neo-baroque” in style.
While I love live performances, I feed my need for historical music through recordings. My favorite festivals include the Boston Early Music Festival and the Ambronay Festival in France. I hope someday soon to attend the Utrecht festival and Bachfest in Leipzig.
I write reviews to share what I like (and sometimes don’t like) about commercial recordings in an effort to help others discover the treasures to be found in recordings. While I’d encourage anyone to seek out the opportunities to hear live music, we don’t all live in areas or have the means to enjoy live performance. Recordings, in of themselves, are interesting as a technology, in how they can delight us not only because of the participation of musical artists, but also because of the way recording engineers overcome the limitations of stereophonic recordings to help us reproduce venues in our own homes.
I recognized years ago—often with a copy of Gramophone or Early Music in my lap—the value in reviews of music recordings. While they can help to market new recordings with more listens or purchases, they also serve as a commentary the music itself, including what makes the music great and how the approach of the artist(s) aligns with my own preferences with performance.
This is of value not so much to the artists themselves—but those who find they have a similar (or dissimilar) taste to my own.
Many reviewers focus on the musical performance alone. I tend to see recordings as more than just a performance: it’s a collaboration between the composer, the musicians, the environment where the recording is made, and the knowledge about how to make a good recording. In that way, I approach writing about a live performance differently than writing about a recording. My ratings reflect the recording, balancing as best I can, the musical content, the performance, and the sound. I do my best to separate these in my writing.
I do accept the offer to audition recordings of pre-releases from both well-known and emerging artists. Among these recordings, my policy is to not review anything sent to me that I don’t think I can proffer a supporting review. That said, for reviews I seek out on my own, my aim is to always showcase the reason behind why something doesn’t maybe work for me. Some artists don’t read reviews and I get it, I’m just a guy with an opinion. The site becomes of value if you find that I like what you like, and I don’t like what you don’t like. In other words, while we may not always agree on taste, I have a taste and aim to reveal it in each review.
In 2024, I began adding stars to the reviews as a type of objective comparison for readers. However I need to explain what these mean to me.
⭐️ - I do not recommend this recording and cannot see its merit. I hope never to use this rating.
⭐️⭐️ - This album has some merit to it, but over all, it might not be something I will not return to listen, except maybe to compare it to newer albums with the same repertoire
⭐️⭐️⭐️ - This is a solid album. The music is played well, generally. The sound quality is okay, maybe not superb. Thinking of a bell-curve, most of my collection of physical CDs are probably three-stars.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - This album is one you should buy (if you collect recordings). The technical aspect of playing is matched by an interesting and moving performance that moves you emotionally.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - This is a so-called desert island album, it’s one you can’t imagine parting with. Everything comes together—music production, sound quality, and extremely engaging playing/singing. Some may consider these their reference-class recordings, the one others get compared to.
I listen to music actively in my car, but also at home in multiple environments. My home system started out with ripping CDs and using iTunes, eventually moving content over to iPods. A lot has changed since those days. I’m currently only interested in digital reproduction and I do not collect vinyl. For those interested, my current system consists of:
Backend. I keep digital rips of all my CDs in Apple lossless format on a Synology network-attached storage server (NAS). This server also houses personal files and is backed up over the cloud. I run a Roon ROCK server attached to my home’s ethernet network. I have several endpoints I use at home.
Office desktop. I am using USB to connect to my MacBook Pro for headphone listening in my home office with a Topping DX5.
Office speakers. For my college graduation gift, my parents provided me with a Rotel integrated amp and B&W 600 series bookshelf speakers. The Rotel died some years ago, but the 602s are still going strong. They are joined to an NAD integrated, an Auralic streamer, and a BelCanto DAC 3. I feed the Auralic via Ethernet but also via Toslink from an older AppleTV to stream music from my computer to the speaker setup.
Dining Room/Kitchen. Our home came with built-in speakers powered by a Sonos amplifier. This is Roon compatible and we use this to push music into the kitchen area.
Listening room. The main setup is currently powered by a Classé class A/B stereo amplifier, Avalon Acoustics loudspeakers, and the Grimm Audio MU2.
Headphones. I listen on Apple’s AirPods Max, AirPods Pro 2, Sennheiser HD 580, Sennheiser HD650, and Meze Elite cans.
Read my thoughts on other topics over at the musings section.
For those interested, a dump of my current music collection (Late 2024 - XLSX).