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American Record Guide

I never enjoyed Schubert’s three violin sona­tas that he wrote while still a teenager until I heard the recording by Gidon Kremer and Oleg Maisenberg (Nov/Dec 2011). They understood that music this simple and direct is only as interesting and moving as you make it. The musicians either feel the music deeply, or the performance is a waste of the audience’s time. No other recording of these sona­tas has matched that one until this. I knew at the outset that Peter Sheppard Skaerved and Julian Perkins had found the essence of this music and greatly enjoyed playing it. They have a wonderful intimacy and informality, like what you would expect to hear in a salon performance (a Schubertiad?). What I espe­cially like is that this duo’s approach is so dif­ferent from the Russians! The English musi­cians are less ardent and more playful but no less moving. They find things in the music that elude everyone else, and their interpre­tive decisions invariably feel valid.

As Skaerved likes to do, he plays on a fine old violin that he has been lent. This instru­ment was built by the great German maker Martin Leopold Widhalm II in Nuremberg in 1782, and he uses a bow made in the 1770s by the great French maker Francois Xavier Tourte. The piano is a square fortepiano by Muzio Clementi (London, 1812). This kind of piano was suited to houses with limited space. The instrument has a warm, nutty sound, like so many fortepianos of its time. One or two notes in the treble aren’t perfectly in tune, but it might be harder to keep an old instrument like this in tune than a modern one. The two instruments go together beauti­fully and suit the music perfectly.

The violin is played with sparse vibrato but without the slow maniera languida portamentos that were an essential part of a violin­ist’s expressive vocabulary at this time. These fell out of fashion in the early 20th Century, but period performance practitioners should integrate them into their playing if they are serious about resurrecting the styles of the past. The intimate, warm recorded sound is perfect for these performances.