Beypazar
Beypazar Although it was only April, the midmorning sun seared the back of my neck as we climbed to one of the escarpment that that cuts through the ‘Knight’s Market’ or Beypazar. For the town turns out to be constructed…
Beethoven and Josef Mayseder
Beethoven and Josef Mayseder Joseph Mayseder- E Flat Major ‘Konzertirend Sonate’ AllegroMoltoAdagioRondo Allegro Ludwig van Beethoven-A major Sonata Op 47 (Kreutzer/Bridgetower) Adagio Sostenuto/PrestoAndante con variazionePrestoPresto Peter Sheppard Skaerved-Violin (Stradivari 1734-‘Habeneck), Aaron Shorr-Piano “Monday the 16th May (1803)…in the evening with…
Beethoven-Sonata Op 96 – Recording and writing
The Sonata Op 96 was the last work for piano with violin ‘accompaniment’, which Beethoven completed. His previous work for this combination, the somewhat inappropriately named ‘Kreutzer Sonata’, was his earliest incorporation of the concertante chamber aesthetic in the duo…
Violin Concerto
I first heard Rochberg’s Violin Concerto when I was a ten year old, in the classic Stern recording. From the first outburst from Stern’s fiddle, the ‘great barbaric yawp’ which begins the concerto, I was transfixed, and terrified. It suddenly…
Nigel Clarke-Pernambuco
Nigel Clarke Pernambuco Live performance: Pharos Contemporary Music Festival. Nikosia. 2009 Peter Sheppard Skaerved-Violin (Hill 1900) In 1993, Nigel Clarke and I were working on the sketches for Pernambuco. The piece had grown from the initial blank…
Hans Werner Henze-Fünf Nachtstücke
Hans Werner Henze-Fünf Nachtstücke Film of the whole thing with Score-recorded with Aaron Shorr 2004 Listen Zwei Hirtenlieder: 2 Hirtenlieder PSS with Aaron Shorr, Nashville 2008 Live performance Hans Werner Henze’s ‘Fünf Nachtstücke’ were written over the winter of 1989-90.…
Winter train
‘A Thesaurus of Violinistic Fiendishness’
Paul Pellay’s Thesaurus of Violinistic Fiendishness is one of the most colourful and technically challenging works ever written for the violin. Each of the seven books has a particular character, or set of references. There is a book based on Goya’s…
Michael Hersch
In 2004, George Rochberg introduced me to the composer Michael Hersch. Later that year, he wrote a first small piece for me, Five Fragments (2004). This was premiered in Mexico City. I will begin to include more information about this…
Dmitri Smirnov
Dmitri Smirnov-Amore Sola 2006 Live Performance in the Enlightenment Gallery 2010 Dmitri Smirnov-Partita 1985 Peter Sheppard-Maurin Stradivarius 1714 (recorded 1995) Playing Dmitri Smirnov’s ‘Amore Sola’ in the Enlightenment gallery-the composer keeping a very close eye! Photo: Richard Bram Peter has…