Viotti lectureship

February 2nd 2012

Peter Sheppard Skaerved has been named the Viotti Lecturer in Performance studies at the Royal Academy of Music.

Peter plays (the ‘Ranz des Vaches’ and talks about his great inspiration)

Peter_in_Hannover_2011[1] — Coaching Britten with students at the Hannover Hochschule fur Musik 2011. Photo Jan Philip Schulze

VIotti — Viotti as musical director, his ‘bow of cotton’ firmly grasped in his ‘arm of Hercules’. The bow in this picture is not a modern ‘Tourte-model’ but a long earlier type. Perhaps Viotti preferred to not use the Tourtes, with their ‘fini precieux’ for the more risky business of directing. Berlioz recalled Habeneck’s willingness to break his bow in frustration, so perhaps conductors reserved their finer instruments for concertantes.