Peter Sheppard Skærved

Peter Sheppard Skærved – The Violin in Modena (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:07:37 minutes | 2,35 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Athene

This album features perhaps some of the best (certainly best-known) works by the top two violin composers working in Modena, Italy, at the end of the 17th century. Vitali and Colombi were both quite prolific and produced pieces of wide variety of form, not whittled down to the standard ‘dance suite’ of the middle and late baroque. While the Vitali works have been recorded previously in a version for ensemble, this is the first recording of the pieces in their solo format – and the same applies to the Colombi and anonymous pieces. The album is a fine and fitting sequel to Skærved’s previous solo recording “Florish in the Key” (Athene ATH 23211) which presented contemporaneous (late 17th century) solo violin music from London. “Genuinely intriguing” – Early Music Review; “Excellent… instantly attractive… uniformly high quality” – Infodad)
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Peter Sheppard Skærved – The Great Violins, Vol. 4 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:21:51 minutes | 2,68 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Athene

Peter Sheppard Skærved is the only violinist to have performed on the violins of Viotti, Paganini, Joachim, Kreisler and Ole Bull. His exploration of the relationship between string music and the instruments used to play it has resulted in years of collaboration with luthiers, archetiers, and projects (ranging from performances to films) working with some of the world’s great collections, especially with the Library of Congress, Washington DC, where he has performed on up to 6 violins in one concert!
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Peter Sheppard Skærved – Hafliði Hallgrímsson: Offerto (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 59:29 minutes | 2,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Metier

Hafliði Hallgrímsson (b.1941) is widely regarded as Iceland’s pre-eminent composer, as well as a highly accomplished cellist. He studied with Enrico Mainardi and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and was cellist with many leading chamber ensembles until devoting himself full time to composition in 1983. Also, in 1970, Hallgrímsson played the (uncredited) cello solo on ‘Atom Heart Mother’ by Pink Floyd. His voice is extremely distinctive and within modernist styles can communicate serious emotions of loss and sorrow and also intensive wit and charm as demonstrated so well by his Klee Sketches on this recording. The Klee Sketches are dedicated to Peter Sheppard Skærved, the performer here. Peter Sheppard Skærved is known for his pioneering approach to the music of the past and our own time. Over 400 works have been written for him. Peters exhaustive 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. His dedicated support of contemporary music (especially with his ensembles, the Kreutzer Quartet and Longbow), is considerable. He is also an accomplished painter and a published writer on many subjects.
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Peter Sheppard Skærved – Tartini: 30 Sonate piccole, Vol. 5 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:07:24 minutes | 766 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Toccata Classics

In the last years of his life, the composer, violinist and swordsman Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) laboured at a vast cycle of sonatas for solo violin. The resulting manuscript offers the most important composition for solo violin after Bach and, at six hours in duration, the largest integrated work for the instrument. This first complete recording is based on a fresh study of the source and includes a number of works deciphered from Tartinis shorthand and overlooked in earlier editions. These Little Sonatas tread a delicate line between Baroque formality and proto-Romantic passion, occasionally illuminated with an echo of the folk-fiddling of his Slovenian homeland.

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Peter Sheppard Skærved – Florish in the Key: The Solo Violin in London 1650-1700 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:12:48 minutes | 2,38 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Athene

As well as being internationally recognized as a leading interpreter of music new and old, Peter Sheppard Skaerved is the only violinist to have performed on the personal violins of Viotti, Paganini, Joachim, Kreisler and Ole Bull. Here he presents the works from Preludes or Voluntarys (2nd edition, published by John Walsh in 1705). The edition includes petite gems from the leading lights of the age such as Purcell, Biber, Pepusch, Correlli and Torrelli, and some whose names are somewhat forgotten: Matteis, Bassani and Vitali – and more who are only known by their surname, probably musicians of the royal court who had presented a work to Walsh for publication. It’s also true that Walsh included several extracts from sonatas, suites and other chamber works, not always correctly attributed. These fascinating pieces are played on a 1664 violin of unknown make which was a instrument of King Charles II’s court orchestra. The album also contains several works by the (at the time) highly regarded Thomas Baltzar, played on the superb 1629 Girolamo Amati violin also used for Sheppard Skaerved’s most recent “Great Violins” recording. Altogether a wonderful album, both musically and historically.

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