Mozart: Violin Sonata No. 22 in A major, K305

Catherine Mackintosh and Geoffrey Govier formed Duo Amadè in order to perform the charming and intimate works of Mozart for this combination in concert, often with readings from his family letters. In 2006 Duo Amadè performed the whole cycle at the Royal College of Music.

The first set of Duo Sonatas was released in late 2008 and received a Gramophone Editor’s Choice in praise of its musicality and ‘historically informed performance’. Mackintosh in particular has long been recognised as one of the pioneering early music protagonists and is fulfilling the ambition of a lifetime with the complete cycle of Duo Sonatas.

Duo Amadè once again offers a charming and intimate performance, presenting the Opus 1 sonatas KV 296, 304, 305 and 306 written in 1778 when sonatas for the piano ‘accompanied’ by a violin were then all the rage.

Geoffrey Govier plays a fortepiano after Anton Walter made by Christopher Clare in Cluny while Catherine plays a violin dating from 1703 by Giovanni Grancino. These instruments bring a lightness and freshness of articulation to these delightful works, entirely in keeping with the spirit of enlightenment in which the sonatas were written.

Mozart had been an outstanding exponent of both the violin and the keyboard ever since childhood, and he extended the limits of the collaboration between the two instruments by freeing the violin from its dependence on the keyboard, thereby revealing both sides of himself at the same time. In this first volume of the Mozart Sonatas for Violin and Piano, the multi-talented and multi-faceted Dmitry Sitkovetsky has selected a program of Mozart’s youthful masterworks. Joined by pianist Antonio Pappano, Sitkovetsky gives full expression to Mozart’s genius – coming across as comical, as in the delightful variations in the A Major sonata K.305, composed in all probability in the early summer of 1778 in Paris; but also able to give expression to the tragic situations that can arise in a young life, as in the E Minor sonata K.304, whose deathly chill came as a direct reaction to the death of his mother.