Bard Records Releases Beethoven Sonatas Featuring MHC Musicians Linda Laderach and Larry Schipull

In this "historically informed performance," conditions are re-created that would have prevailed when the work was composed. In other words, this recording attempts a kind of aural time travel, taking the listener back to the beginning of the nineteenth century when these sonatas of Beethoven became known in live performances in salons, parlors, and drawing rooms. Nearly every variable in music performance has changed profoundly in the two hundred years since these sonatas came before the public; hearing these works without two centuries of stylistic accretions is like viewing a restored painting. Often, in the restoration of visual artifacts, the viewer is struck by the intensity of the original colors and the new sharpness of the images.

Similarly, these performances, restorations of aural artifacts, may surprise even a Beethoven junkie. The instruments used in this recording were built recently, but their design, structure, and materials follow the traditions in use in Central Europe in the later eighteenth century. The violin, by Douglas Cox (1984), has gut strings, which give a warmer, less edgy sound than modern metal strings. Laderach uses a transitional bow by Harry Grabenstein. The fortepiano, by Peter Fisk and F. Jacob Kaeser (1996), has fewer keys (therefore fewer strings) than a modern piano, and thus less tension on its all-wood structure, allowing for more resonance. It also has less ring when keys are released, so that it has a rhythmic crispness more like that of a harpsichord. The general pitch is lower than modern standard pitch, and the fortepiano is tuned in a manner so that, for example, A major and A-flat major have different characters.

Linda Laderach, violinist, combines performing careers on both early and modern violin with her teaching career at Mount Holyoke. Since her solo debut with the Toledo Symphony at the age of sixteen, she has appeared as soloist and chamber musician, with appearances at the Eastern Music, Aspen Music, and Anchorage Baroque Music Festivals. She has performed with Banchetto Musicale, L'Harmonie Musicale, and the Folger Consort.

Larry Schipull, fortepianist, has performed as soloist and chamber musician in North America, Europe, the Caribbean and Asia. Before taking the position of College organist and associate professor at Mount Holyoke, he was on the faculty of the University of Hong Kong, where he was active as a recitalist and accompanist, with solo appearances in the 1987 Hong Kong Arts Festival and the City Hall Silver Jubilee.

Together, Laderach and Schipull have collaborated in duo recitals, radio concerts, and as members of the Mount Holyoke Faculty Baroque Ensemble. They have toured Western Europe and the United States since 1989 with recitals on the early violin with harpsichord and fortepiano, and modern violin with piano and organ.

Albany Music is the distributor of all the recordings on the Bard label. The recordings may be purchased at the College bookstore and local music stores, via the Folger Shakespeare Library Web site, shakespeare-etc.org, or by calling 212-675-0364 or 202-675-0308.