Knowledge Exchange Violin – Part 4 SPRING 2024

Posted on March 5th, 2024 by Peter Sheppard Skaerved

Zagreb March 5th 2024

5th March 2024. Conversation with Antonija Dejanovic. documentation specialist and curator at Museum of arts and crafts, Zagreb

So it’s time for the next stage in my Research England supported ‘Knowledge Exchange Violin’ project. I am in Zagreb at the beginning of a week of workshops, masterclasses, conversations, concerts and collaborations in this wonderful city.

What is Knowledge Exchange Violin?! It’s a very good question, and best answered by links to the two previous posts about stages one and two of the project, in 2022.

Stage One: https://www.peter-sheppard-skaerved.com/2022/06/knowledge-exchange-violin-2022/

Stage Two: https://www.peter-sheppard-skaerved.com/2023/01/knowledge-exchange-violin-2023

Stage Three: https://www.peter-sheppard-skaerved.com/2023/08/knowledge-exchange-violin-part-3-autumn-2023/

It has been a big day for Knowledge Exchange Violin, both here in Croatia and online. Today the Library of Congress released two of the films that I have made with them, exploring two violins from the collection, with composer Michael Alec Rose, who has been and is so central to this project.

These week, I am in Zagreb, with my wife and collaborator Malene Sheppard Skaerved, based at the wonderful Zagreb Academy of Music. Today was only day one this residency, but was full of inspiration, ideas and diversity. We are quite literally situated in the Academy, as we have been given the use of a lovely apartment on the roof of the building, right next to the National Theatre/Opera House, and looking north to the old city, crowned by the 13th Century Church of St Mark and the cathedral to the North East. This was the view from my desk at 8 am this morning.

The view from our apartment on the roof of the Music Academy Roof. 5 3 24.

Zagreb is a city with a lot of personal history for me, a place where so much exploration and discovery has happened in the past. I first visited the city in 1999, to give concerts with Jorg Widmann and Jan Philip Schulze at the Zagreb Biennale. A few years later, I was back for a more rooted project in the city and its musical community, one which would resonate both my work, and of a number of other musicians. Indeed it is the very reason that I am here.

That project was a collaboration with the acclaimed Zagreb Soloists string orchestra, and composer Nigel Clarke. This resulted in an important piece, for both the composer and me, his ‘Miraculous Violin’, for violin and 13 strings. Here it is.

The leader of the Soloists at the time was the violinist Andelko Krpan, and sitNovi Zagrebting next to him was the violinist Laura Vadjon. Andelko is now the Dean of the Music Academy here, and Laura, reigning queen of Balkan baroque violinists. They are both evermore questing, idealist musicians, and our conversations and collaborations as to the future of our shared art, about repertoire, now include the students we work with, the next generations of artists.

But today we began the week of exploration in the ‘backstage’ of a museum, the Museum of Arts and Crafts, or MUO. As many of you will know, museums and collections are central to my work, and especially to this project, which includes shared projects with the Ashmolean Museum, the Minneapolis institute of Arts, the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum and coming up soon the Paganini violins in the care of the City of Genova. The Museum of Arts and Crafts’ home is a beautiful 19th century building a few yards from where I am writing this, on Trg Rep. Hrvatske. However, like many of the buildings in the city, this building was badly damaged in the earthquake which hit the city on in March 2020. One of the most striking aspects of returning to the capital after a long gap was seeing the reconstruction and restoration which is underway, especially of the Cathedral, which lost both of its spires as a result of the quake and its aftershocks.

So the collection of the museum, is now housed in the large Museum of Contemporary Art/Muzej suvremene umjetnosti, which is situated in the Novi Zagreb area of the city. Arriving at the museum, we were led into the restoration rooms of the Arts and Crafts Museum, in the

basement of the ‘MSU’.

It immediately became clear to Malene and I, that there was a necessary counterpoint between the themes and ideas behind the restoration of art objects, and the rebuilding, the rebirth of the the City. This clearly, will be a theme of the films which we would like to make here, on our return later in the year.

But initially, the reason for our visit to the museum was to see a violin is which is housed here. This instrument is labelled in the collection as a ‘pochette’. As so often the case with ‘non-standard’ size of design of instruments, the monikers applied to them (especially, in my experience, ‘Piccolo violin’) are inaccurate, and often as proved to be the case here, misleading. I might say that one of the themes of this project has turned out to be ‘what is a violin?’ or ‘violin shaped objects’!

Anyway as I talked with Antonija Dejanovic. documentation specialist and curator at the museum, I had this wonderful object in my hand, and began to ease it towards being playable, and working out, what to do with it, and maybe, what it is.

Multiple conversations were running at the same time: whilst I talked with Antonija, Malene was deep in discussion with two restorers working on baroque paintings on the other side of the room – Jaminka Podgorski and Ksenija Pinta. They were digging into the questions around the aesthetics and ethics of removing overpainting and varnish, and in two cases ‘pentimenti’: We have been thinking more about your Dido and Aeneas picture: This pentimento is so fascinating, as the ‘repenting’ in question, either was by the the artist or perhaps the commissioner of the paintino. Of course Dido’s sister goes by A number of names: For musicians, the name ‘Belinda’ was first used for Dido’s sister in the 17th century opera by Purcell – but in Ovid (where she appears in both ‘Metamorphoses’ and ‘Fasti’ she is ‘Anna Perrenna’, who escapes from their brother (Pygmalion), and then is later shipwrecked on the shores of Lavinium, named for Aeneas’ wife, ‘Lavinia’, who, understandably grows irate at her husband’s ex-lover’s sister, forcing her to flee, and be turned into a water-nymph. Without her, and with ‘rosy-fingered dawn appearing between the lovers, the picture is the end of a long night of lovemaking.

With the figure, it is the tragic

Working with young musicians at the the Zagreb Music Academy 5 3 24

eparture of Aeneas, leading directly to the Queen’s suicide, a tragic picture. (all in Aeneid Book IV). Of course, there is another partner in the story, Dido’s husband, Acerbas (or Sychaeus), priest of Hercules and a man of immense wealth, murdered by Pygmalion, in some ways, Dido’s death is punishment for that murder. Rubens depicts the suicide alongside Acerbas’ body.

Later in the week, the Museum posted this on their social media page:

This week, distinguished professor and versatile artist Peter Sheppard Skaerved has spent a pleasant time with the curators and restorers of the Museum of Art and Crafts.

During viewing selected music (violin and harp) from the Museum’s Musical Instruments Collection, prof. Sheppard enthusiastically transmitted elements of his encyclopedic knowledge to expert museum staff. We look forward to seeing you again!

After this inspiring meeting, we returned to the music academy for an inspiring afternoon of masterclasses. There were three fascinating chamber groups working with me, playing Shostakovich Quartets (3 and 8) and Martinu’s wonderful sonata for Violin, Flute and Piano.

This last was particularly fascinating for me; it was a piece which I last explored as a student violinist, and actually, I played it in my first every concert in Denmark, when I was 22, at the Musikforeningen in the old Music Academy Building, with the flutist Janne Thomsen and pianist Ulrik Stærk. Little did I know then that this was the beginning of a journey where Denmark would be such a big part of my life!

Working with a young composer. Zagreb 5 3 24

At the end of the masterclasses, I led a session exploring writing for the violin today, with both composers and players from the Academy. The conversation was grounded in a new work written for me by a young composer here, and we reached out to questions of technique and aesthetics across all musical periods. The past so often revitalises the present! This session would provide the underpinning for the concert

on the following day, which bounced back and forth from present to past, by way of chaconnes and passacaglias from the 17th, 18th, 20th and 21st Centuries!

Wednesday 7th February – Zagreb day two

Today was a truly fascinating one. The morning was given over to masterclasses, mostly with violinists. The repertoire was Mozart and Beethoven concerti and Paganini Caprices. Even after a lifetime exploring and thinking about these pieces, I am still struck by how fascinating they are, and how much there is to explore: with Mozart, today, the focus was on characterisation and harmonic preparation. I find that younger artists are often

surprised at the technical depth that I expect to explore, how much drama and story is revealed by extremely detailed engagement with the music. The violinist playing Paganini is very naturally gifted, so the inevitable question emerges – how to avoid simply leaning into what we find easy and ensure that we confront the real challenge of this music, and not just what we find convenient? I realised today that I have rarely taught the Beethoven concerto, so I was grateful for this chance to return to this piece that has been such a vital part of my evolution as an artist. In some ways, this is a piece that confronts today’s short-breathed, ‘immersive’ obsessions. It’s scale demands time and consideration, but it refuses to overwhelm, to seduce the listener or player. It is up to travel alongside it. to keep abreast of its melos and argument, but it certainly does not need us. Beethoven came up again in conversation at the end of the day, after my concert. Malene and I spent a lovely evening over supper with our old friends, violinists

Malene Skaerved in conversation with violinist Andelko Krpan. Zagren 6 3 24

In the afternoon, Malene and I went up to the upper, old town to find coffee, and to search for our stories, the tales that we find welling up from the stones and earth of the places that we love. One of the most important things about travel, is to sit and do nothing, to just be somewhere, find a table, a coffee, and let the buildings, the atmosphere, the layered history come us. So that’s what we did: we found a lovely table on Ul. Pavla Radica, with a friendly waiter, under the shadow of the city walls, and a cute puppy doing the rounds. Spring is on the way, and the embankments of this medieval redoubt are covered with Violets and Speedwell flowers. And that’s all we needed, before I pushed back into the second half of the day.

The evening was in two halves. First of all, I worked with the contemporary music group on a lovely project which they had made around the

Working on the Zagreb Academy ‘Folksongs’ project. 6 3 24

idea of ‘modern folksongs’. At the centre of this endeavour is Luciano Berio’s ‘Folksongs’ (1964), originally written for his then wife, Cathy Beberian. Fascinatingly, Berio’s response to working with folksongs mirrors that of Haydn, and Beethoven, when they were commissioned by Robert Burns’ publisher, G S Thomson, to make arrangements of British and European folksongs. Berio noted:

“When I work with that music I am always caught by the thrill of discovery.”

For me, working with the past, and with the vernacular, ignites that thrill of discovery: it is one of the themes of ‘Knowledge Exchange Violin’. The college had asked a group of student composers to arrange folksongs, like Berio’s, drawn from a variety of sources. One of the arrangement sets worked with the Beethoven/Thomson arrangements on which I have spent such a lot of energy in the past, and another, of Croatian folk songs was made by Ivan Makar, who has written a lovely piece for solo violin which I will premiere on my next visit this spring.

Then it was time for the concert. I put together a programme which explored various communications: the communication that I enjoy with composers, alive and dead, the communication between past and present, between composers and other composers, between, composers and their inspirations. I wrote in the programme:

‘Michael Hersch responds to the writing of Bruno Schulz. Heinrich Biber invites us to walk a Passacaglia with our Guardian Angel. Mihailo Trandafilovski, picks up the walking theme with a timbral chaconne. Telemann revels in the countryside; this is his most pastoral Fantasie. The young composer Thomas McDonnell studies at London’s Purcell School – his new work has been developed in workshops with Peter and the composer Robert Saxton. The Klagenfurt Manuscript is the greatest single collection of 17^th century solo violin music; nearly all of it anonymous, and most likely written by a nun in present-day Slovenia. David Matthews returns to the wintery theme – a frozen fantasia. Michel Woldemar was an ‘outsider’ musician in revolutionary France – his ‘Dream’ is a variation on Gluck. And the late Dmitri Smirnov is inspired by an intriguing melody by Leonardo da Vinci.’

After the concert there was a burst of excited conversation with students and staff from the Academy. As well as being excited by the

Talking to staff, students and audience after the concert. 6 3 24. The Head of Strings of the Zagreb Academy, Ivan Novinc, is on the left 6 3 24

programme they wanted to meet the very early Brescian violin (16th century) on which I played the suite from the ‘Klagenfurt Manuscript’ (1685).

But most inspiringly, the students were most interested, and moved by the piece by the very young composer from my Purcel School composer’s project, Tom McDonnell ‘…autour les sonorités..’.

‘Can we see it – we would like to play it’

Absolutely nothing inspires me more, than that. I brought music by an emerging composer from a wonderful British music school, to the freshest, most lively european music academy, and violinists here immediately recognised music that they wanted to be a part of! What could be a better outcome. Today, I will send them the music and put composer and performers in touch: my job, as ever, is to make the links and then to be unnecessary! Such a wonderful thing to a small part of.

Friday March 8th Zagreb

The last two days have been completely filled with music and collaborators. By the time I got to this evening, I had give 27 sessions, on solo and chamber music by JS Bach, CPE Bach, Quantz, Mozart, Beethoven, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Ernst, Shostakovich, Berio, Haydn and young

Teaching Bach. Zagreb 7 3 24

composers’ work. If there was a dominant composer, it has to have been Bach-the young musicians brought me material from three of three Sonatas and Partitas, which, of course, are central to every violinist’s life and work.

What are the questions which dominate conversations with young musicians today, here in the Balkans. Well, we focused on a specific handful.

What is music about? Or more to the point, what is the specific moment, or a particular piece, about?
What should be the relationship between the concerns and milieux of the composers whose music we play and our explorations of it now?
What level of technical investigation/preparation should we aspire to in order to be most faithful to the works we play and to our audience.
Are we shackled by the traditions of old and more recent pedagogies? If so, how do we cast them off.

One moment in a masterclass/coaching summed this up. I spent Friday morning working on two works by composers most associated with

Working on Quantz with musicians in Zagreb 8 3 24

the court of Frederick the Great, C P E Bach and Johann Joachim Quantz. Not surprisingly, given these composers’ concerns, the conversation turned to the emotional content of music, to Empfindungskeit – which one might translate as the idealistion of extreme emotional sensitivity. As the second group shaped the peroration of the Adagio of the Quantz trio sonata, a palpable shiver, a chill, flashed through everyone in the room. The past it seemed, momentarily touched the present, or the present touched the past. The thing that we had been talking about, happened.

All around us, in the city, the question of how we correspond with, countertpoint, revitalise, renew, respect and rebel against the past is being asked every day. The variegated responses and rebuildings following the earthquakes of 2020 offer answers and in some cases more questions, at every step the streets of this warm and intelligent city. In our brief break between masterclasses and workshops, we found our way to the beautiful streets around the cathedral, which stands in the area on the eastern slopes of the Old Town – the Kaptol, where King Ladislaus founded the Zagreb dioceses in 1094. When the earthquake hit, one of the 800 year-old Cathedral’s two west end spires collapsed onto the adjacent medieval bishop’s palace. This was ironic, because these spires were erected after an 1880 earthquake flattened a single 17th century

Reconstructed spire segment, waiting to be hoisted up to its place. Zagreb Cathedral, 8 3 24

watchtower, built to look out for Ottoman invaders, which had served as the cathedral bell tower. The modern stone yard which had been spread out in front of the still-closed building, when I visited last year, is largely cleared now, but a few pieces, segments to be inserted into the top of the spires, still sit there. They visibly tell a similar story to the one of restoration, renewal and replacement which we have been exploring.

Renewal, Restoration, Rebirth. The 1861 Church of the Transfiguration, Zagreb,

Tuesday April 23rd 2024 Zagreb

Back in wonderful Zagreb, and the real work , on this, the latest stage of my ‘Knowledge Exchange Violin’ project. The theme that has emerged here over the past few months is Renewal & Restoration: what is our obligation to the past, present and future and how do these questions collide and collude. Powerfully evident here in the wonderful 1861 Church of the Transfiguration, Zagreb, built by Franjo Klein. e: even a vision of the star-filled empyrean is fragile.

At the heart of this project, a painting: On my most recent visit here, Malene and I spent time with the team of curators and restorers at the Arts and Crafts Museum. This wonderful collection, founded in the 1880s, has its home in a beautiful victorian building next to the Zagreb Music Academy, where I am writing this. When I first came to work in the Croatian capital, two decades ago, I haunted the collection, and fell in love with the building. However, like many of the older buildings in the city, the old structure proved vulnerable to Poseidon’s wrath, and was badly damaged in the earthquake which struck the city in the spring of 2020. So now the collection and its staff are housed in the modern Museum of Contemporary Art, which is about 5 kilometres south of the city centre. Our main reason to visit, was an interesting violin: I will return to this later. However, in the course of our conversations with the curators and restorers there, we were shown a fascinating and beautiful painting by Guido Reni (1575 – 1642). This picture, which depicts the parting of Dido and Aeneas, reveals a lot more, under x-ray. If you watch the film below, built around a wonderful piece which Michael Alec Rose has written about the painting, you will get a sense of what I am talking about. See above!

One the restorers, Jasminka Podgorski, who we met on our first visit, explains the process of examining a painting under X-Ray.

‘The property of X-rays is that they can pass through a certain matter in a stronger or weaker way depending on the ability of the matter to absorb it. They leave traces on the film placed on the other side. This property of X-rays is used for imaging various materials – from metals in industry, human body in medicine to paintings and sculptures in art. Radiography in art is a very useful method because you can find out a lot of data (as for example answering questions concerning authenticity) without any damage to artwork itself. The ability of artwork to absorb X-rays depends on its integral components.

On the radiogram two figures Aeneas and Dido form the central composition of the painting. Except for them, in the right upper corner you can see a third character, i.e. a female head with a headdress. In daylight this female head cannot be seen because it has been painted over with a brown-black colour. When looking from various angles you notice a different structure of the area as well as its being a slightly darker colour.

To get more information about this invisible female figure a method of X-ray fluorescent spectroscopy was applied to determine which pigments were used. The paint layer was investigated on the same spot on two measurement points, one at the front of the painting and one at the back.

When comparing the spectrums obtained from the front (brown – lead white, iron oxide i.e umber, copper pigment i.e. azurite?) to those from the back (lead white, zink white, copper pigment i.e. azurite?, iron oxide) one notices that the main difference is in the intensity of zink which is six times greater at the back. Since zink white was used only since the 19^th century it can be assumed that the measurement point was chosen in the area where past restoration has taken place. It is therefore recommended that further analyses both non-destructive and those that would include taking samples from the area where female figure is hiding are undertaken. These analyses should also include comparing pigment composition of the female head to those from the other areas of the painting since that has not yet been done.’ Jasminka Podgorski

My collaborator and partner, Malene Sheppard Skaerved. Zagreb 23 4 24

But there is an exciting question here, which underpins a lot of what I am trying to explore in this project: what is our duty to the past, present and future, as humans, as artists. Which past do we preserve or reveal – bearing in mind that, for instance, revealing the distant past will, and has, involved destroying less remote histories: when Trajan’s market was revealed in Rome. In the middle ages the 2nd century market was built up with extra stories, and the Torre de Milizie was added on in 1300. in the 1500s a convent was added, which was turned ino the Goffredo Mameli barracks in 1885. At the beginning of the 1900s, this was demolised to reveal the market. Late Renaissance hisroty was removed, to make way for the iron age remains. Is our priority always to be to reveal, to preserve the ancient past, and to ignore more recent histories.

This question lies at the heart of the work, the discussion that I have been having with the Library of Congress in Washington DC. This film, released last week, explores aspects of that.

Working with the students here at the Zagreb Music Academy, we have been exploring how this interchange of past and present affects their decision-making, the aesthetics and ethics of the peformer’s art and craft. This morning, the gifted young guitarist, Eva Nem?i?, offered a profound insight:

” I like to remember, when I play music, which is, say, 200 years old, that people then could not just go and hear any music that they wanted, like we can – on our phones and computers. The only time that they could hear music, was when it was played, like this, or at a concert. Which means, that when a section of a classical piece is repeated, that is very special, it’s very precious … another chance to hear something again’ (Eva Nem?i? – Zagreb 23 4 24)

I must say, that his was an unexpected and beautiful way of seeing things. I really had not thought of it – although, like every great original thought, it seems obvious, after someone has thought of it, and then told us! This is why we work together – ideas sought, opinions shared, are a boon for us all.

And meteorological inspiration over the mountains visible from my desk at Academy of Music, University of Zagreb 23 4 24

Wednesday April 24th – Zagreb

Old and new: Glimpsed in a pharmacy window, an old bottle of Tincture of colchicum, which was derived from plants of the genus Colchicum, of the lily family, especially the autumn crocus, C. autumnale. The medicine has historically been used to treat gout, but in recent years proved effective against the symptoms of Covid-19 (Old Town Zagreb 23 4 24)

Advertising the upcoming collaboration with the museums and academy here in Zagreb 24 4 24

The work here is very much in concert with the wonderful community of musicians at the Music Academy. Today like yesterday, was a rich feast of music making. In the time that I am here, I am giving masterclasses to soloists and ensembles playing Carulli, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Dvorak, Glazunov, Lalo, Schubert, Haydn, Prokofiev, Arutiunian, Wieniawski, Beethoven, Ysaye, Bach, Sibelius, Mozart, as well as Croation composers from our own time, Pavle Dešpalj, Adalbert Markovi?, F. ?urovi?, and the late 19th centyr, Doris Peja?evi?. Here’s an extract from my working notes, which reveals the fascination of working with a highly prepared and energised young group playing a piano trio by Frano ?urovi?:

‘It was great to start the day with such a well – prepared and energy-filled performance of an exciting piece. They gave me a real performance, to begin the session : and then we were really able to work. We talked in detail about the tension between piano and string intonation, and in that context, the importance of pitch inflection to lead the ear and the musical argument. There was a very necessary discussion, about increasing the range of attack and note-endings, and the challenges of matching piano and string note-onsets. I think that the biggest surprise for them was the usefulness of ‘density’ of sound, as well as ‘transparency’, that sometimes it is vital to make a timbre and sound quality which is opaque.’ PSS teaching notes 24 4 24

Our visit to the Arts and Crafts Museum last month sparked a real collaboration between the Academy, the Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art. This will result in a public even on Friday, involving students playing new and old works alongside my performance of works from the 17th to the 21st Centuries, and Malene’s words in response to our work, and new pieces, by David Matthews and Michael Alec Rose.

Here’s the programme/menu for the evening:

Michael Alec Rose (SAD): ‘Anna Parenna’ za violinu solo – praizvedba

David Matthews: ‘Arctic Suite’ (Arkti?ka suita) za violinu solo – prizvedba

Nigel Clarke: ‘Loulan/Voices in the Sand’ (Loulan/Glasovi u pijesku) za violinu solo – prva izvedba u Hrvatskoj

Vigo Kova?i? : ‘So Not Ina’ za violinu solo – praizvedba

Ivan Makar : ‘Studija’ za violinu solo – praizvedba

Giovanni Battista Vitali (1694-1694): ‘Partite Diverse e Sonate’

Malene Sheppard Skærved – ?ita tri pjesme

Johann Sebastian Bach: 2. partita za violinu solo u d-molu, BWV 1004

Pavle Dešpalj: Gusla?ki hir za violinu solo

Fabijan Koš?ak : Eglogue za flautu, violinu i gitaru – praizvedba

Seven world premieres, music from the 1600s Italy, and Michael Alec Rose’s piece inspired by Guido Reni. The concert has seized the imagination of the local media and artistic community, and the wires are buzzing with the news. This is what can happen when an idea, and collaboration between institutions, results in something real, meaningful.

The restorer’s materials: our project here in Zagreb is all about renewal, revival, restoration. It was the work of the restorers and the curators at MUO – Muzej za umjetnost i obrt / Museum of Arts and Crafts and the wonderful players and composers at the Zagreb Music Academy that inspire it. Malene Sheppard Skaerved has led the conversation with the extraordinary restorers at the museum, and spotted this during our filming there yesterday.

And today, that collaboration produced a real outcome, on film. We returned to the team at the Museum of Arts and Crafts to spend the afternoon documenting conversations and performances, on the instrument and alongside the Guido Reni painting, that has inspired this project. More to follow!!!

Malene Skaerved interviews restorer Jasminka.podgorski at the Zagreb Museum of Arts and Crafts 24 4 24

We had been eagerly, and nervously anticipating the afternoon of filming with the team at ‘MUO’ the museum of arts and crafts. Each of our Knowledge Exchange films explores the work and ideas of an institution in a different way. This was the first chance that we have had to approach the question of the duty, the obligation to the past and present, with a the people who deal with this question in perhaps the most terrifying, material way, with paintings: the restorers.

Here are some outtakes !!!

Thursday April 25th

The project is now running at such intensity, that I will have to catch the blog up later. However, here are images from the day!

Knowledge Exchange Violin – Part 4 SPRING 2024

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