The Whole Note

Violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved continues his fascinating series The Great Violins with the 2CD Volume 3: Antonio Stradivari, 1685 – The Klagenfurt Manuscript.

The manuscript, which also dates from the mid-1680s was found in a Carinthian convent, and Skærved offers the opinion that the anonymous composer was probably one of the nuns or lay sisters. All 96 movements for solo violin are recorded here, the overwhelming majority of them only between one and two minutes in length. An astonishing 51 involve any one of six scordaturas – retuning of the strings – although it’s difficult to identify the resulting “Striking changes in colour and timbre” that Skærved references in his extensive and extraordinarily detailed booklet essay that explores every possible aspect of the challenges and possibilities that he encountered in the project.

It’s a record of a quite remarkable personal journey of discovery, and while not a set for the casual listener, it’s an absolute mine of information for anyone interested in the violin music of the period.

—Terry Robbins