Acclaimed and prolific violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved is in full flow with six recording projects underway including contemporary music, ancient works continuing his ‘Great Violins’ series for Divine Art, and more. On this new album he presents the brilliant set of six sonatas for piano and violin D.301-306 by Mozart, with the equally talented and critically praised pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar.
In 1778 Mozart dedicated this set of six sonatas to the piano-playing Electress Elisabeth of the Palatinate. These extraordinary pieces, mark the beginning of his cycle of mature works for piano, accompanied by violin. This is a dazzlingly colourful, drama-filled, and emotional set of pieces, ranging from the concertante brilliance of the D Major, originally conceived as a concerto for the two instruments, to the sublime melancholy of the E minor, famously Mozart’s only work in this key.
Both of the artists are acclaimed for recording large-scale cycles from the 17th to 19th centuries. After years of collaboration, public and private, this recording is their long-awaited first disc together, and the first of their traversal of the Mozart set. These highly adventurous recordings were conceived in the spirit of conversation: the artists are inspired by the fact that this is music written for the salon, for the drawing room, for the home, and this informs their approach. They both play sitting down, sitting close to each other, enabling the lines and colours to intertwine, rather than be projected in ‘large-scale’, concert-hall fashion. The results are far from domestic – this approach enables refined rubati and shapings, whip-lash changes of direction and bubbling speeds, not unlike the talk of friends at table.
Mozart: The Palatinate Sonatas ATH 23212
W.A. Mozart: Sonatas for Piano with Violin
- K. 301 in G major
- K. 302 in E flat major
- K. 303 in C major
- K. 304 in E minor
- K. 305 in A major
- K.306 in D major
Recorded in 2021: Engineer: Adaq Khan
Peter Sheppard Skærved is known for his pioneering approach to the music of our own time and the past. Over 400 works have been written for him, by composers Laurie Bamon, Judith Bingham, Nigel Clarke, Robert Saxton, Edward Cowie, Jeremy Dale Roberts, Peter Dickinson, Michael Finnissy, Elena Firsova, David Gorton, Naji Hakim, Sadie Harrison, Hans Werner Henze, Sıdıka Őzdil, Rosalind Page, George Rochberg, Michael Alec Rose, Poul Ruders, Volodmyr Runchak, Evis Sammoutis, Elliott Schwartz, Peter Sculthorpe, Howard Skempton, Dmitri Smirnov, Jeremy Thurlow, Mihailo Trandafilovski, Judith Weir, Jörg Widmann, Ian Wilson, John Woolrich and Douglas Young.
Peter’s pioneering work on music for violin alone has resulted in research, performances and recordings of cycles by Bach, de Bériot, Tartini, Telemann, and, most recently, his project, ‘Preludes and Vollenteries’, which brings together 200 unknown works from the seventeenth century, from composers including Colombi, Lonati, Marini and Matteis, with the Wren and Hawksmoor churches in London’s Square Mile.
His work with museums has resulted in long-term projects at institutions including the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, the Metropolitan Museum, New York City, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, Galeria Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City, and the exhibition ‘Only Connect’, which he curated at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Most recently his ‘Tegner’ commissioned by the Bergen International Festival, is a close collaboration with the major Norwegian abstract artist, Jan Groth, resulting in a set of solo Caprices, premiering at Kunsthallen, Bergen, and travelling to galleries in Denmark, the UK and even Svalbard/Spitzbergen. Peter is the only living violinist to have performed on the violins of Ole Bull, Joachim, Paganini and Viotti. As a writer, Peter has published a monograph on the Victorian artist/musician John Orlando Parry, many articles in journals worldwide, and most recently, Practice: Walk, for Routledge.
Peter is the founder and leader of the Kreutzer Quartet and the artistic director of the ensemble Longbow. Viotti Lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music, he was elected Fellow there in 2013. He is married to the Danish writer Malene Skærved and they live in Wapping. He has made many solo and chamber recordings – his titles for Divine Art group alone number 26.
Daniel-Ben Pienaar has garnered an international reputation for his unusual musicianship. He has a particular interest in early music, Bach, the Viennese classics and early Romantics, and is especially noted for his substantial discography. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London, and currently its Curzon Lecturer in Performance Studies. He has been a member of the Royal Academy of Music teaching faculty, assuming a variety of roles, since 2005. In addition to doctoral supervision his teaching has included elective courses on Bach, on Mozart, on Schubert and on Piano Sonatas (1778-1854), running an interpretation seminar for master’s degree students with cellist Neil Heyde and curating a series of repertoire and performance practice workshops for postgraduate pianists. Public talks on a wide range of performance-related topics are also a regular feature of his Academy work, including an on-going series ‘Listening to Recordings’. His discography is very extensive and as well as several albums for Avie and Deux-Elles, he has recordings of Byrd, Haydn and Bach awaiting release.
