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“There are two radically opposite ways to interpret a work from the past: the first attempts to transport it to the present, the second attempts to see it through eyes of the era in which it was born attempting to give back to it that spirit from its time of creation.”. N. Harnoncourt
This was the exact point of departure for our recording. We imagined traveling back in time to find ourselves in front of new music, never before written, searching in some way to free ourselves from two centuries of musical history. We placed ourselves in the shoes of both musicians and audience unfamiliar with the music of Schubert or Brahms, people born and raised in the 1700s. There was therefore the need to re-discover all those rhetoric and stylistic elements proper to Baroque music, and the need to find a sound closest to that which the composers themselves heard in their minds, a sound produced by musical instruments from that particular period.
We have chosen to use non-coated gut strings on our instruments, to tune to 430 Hz (the tuning pitch used back then) and use bows from that period that are, in my opinion, responsible to help uncover that particular sound due to their particular articulation – completely different from modern bows.
It is clear that non-coated gut strings do not solely guarantee a “period sound”, as these were still in use in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th Century. To obtain a sound that comes closest as possible to that known by Mozart it is not enough to have carefully reconstructed instruments. Interpreters must attempt to mimic methods of the era drawing from many elements, such as knowledge of ancient treatise and practice, history and musicology, but above all possess the appropriate sensibility.
The Leopold Mozart treatise was of great help to prepare the piece, above all the chapters that dealt with embellishments. His constant commitments to discover the “correct effect” through appropriate phrasing make one think of the creation and development of the genius of Mozart. Above all it makes one realize that the “Violinschule” itself contained the formula for the “magic potion” that brought to us one of the greatest geniuses of humanity.
It is without doubt that our voyage was of great stimulus and undertaken with conviction, curiosity and dedication. I hope it has helped us render justice to these quartets, but above all to make them alive as they were living expressions of their era.
Marco Serino