Mozart: Violin Sonata No. 25 in F major, K377

When he was eight years old Mozart wrote a series of duo sonatas sanctioned for violin or fl ute and keyboard. Written in London, they were dedicated to Queen Charlotte. The sonatas performed on this disc were written much later for violin but, using that earlier precedent, have been transcribed for fl ute by one of the world’s greatest exponents of the instrument, Patrick Gallois. Memorably tuneful, they represent different stages of Mozart’s development and are beautifully suited to their new guise.

Sitkovetsky was born in Azerbaijan, grew up in Moscow where he studied at the Moscow Conservatoire and then emigrated to the US where he studied at the Julliard School. He has performed throughout the world as a soloist and also conducts. He is increasingly involved with contemporary composers and has premiered concerti written for him by Caskin and Meyer.

Friederike Starkloff began studying the violin at the age of 5. She has competed in many national and international competitions and in 2009 gained second place at the International Lepold Mozart Competition in Augsberg, which brought this recording about.

Catherine Mackintosh and Geoffrey Govier formed Duo Amadè in the 1980s, specifically to perform the charming and intimate works for keyboard and violin by Mozart in concert, often with readings from his family letters.

This is the fourth volume in the series of Mozart’s accompanied sonatas. The first volume was made an Editor’s Choice by Gramophone in recognition of its musicality and ‘historically informed performances’, while the second volume was made a Critic’s Choice in the same magazine. In this latest volume of duo sonatas, featuring KV 377, KV 379, KV 403, and KV 481, Duo Amadè once again offers performances of a similar spirit and style.

The violinist Catherine Mackintosh has long been recognised as a pioneering early music performer, and in recording the complete cycle of duo sonatas by Mozart she is fulfilling the ambition of a lifetime. Best known as the former leader of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, she plays with The Purcell Quartet, among others, and is a distinguished teacher.

Her partner in Duo Amadè is the fortepianist Geoffrey Govier, who over the last twenty years has worked with singers such as Gerald Finley, Charles Daniels, and Catherine Bott, the horn player Andrew Clark, and the chamber groups Ensemble Galant and The Revolutionary Drawing Room. He finds time for both editorial work and research into the development of the fortepiano.

Geoffrey Govier plays an instrument made by Christopher Clare in Cluny after Anton Walter, while Catherine Mackintosh plays a violin by Giovanni Grancino, dating from 1703. The 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.

Paul Badura Skoda, a legendary artist, really needs no introduction. He has recorded a vast repertoire and here collaborates with the young Austrian violinist, Thomas Albertus Irnberger. Both performers are playing period instruments in these recordings.

Mozart wrote these sonatas as violin sonatas, which were published in Hamburg and Paris around 1800 as an arrangement for flute and piano. The arrangement heard on this album is a new adaptation by Shigeko Fukui-Fauser. It was derived from the original edition of the violin sonatas (Henle Verlag) and adapted for the flute. The approach was to come closer to Mozart‘s musical spirit – piano sonatas with lead instrumental extension – than in the Paris edition and to free the music from historical dogma.

The Duo partnership of Gary Cooper and Rachel Podger has taken them worldwide. Their recordings of Mozart’s Complete Sonatas for Keyboard & Violin have received countless awards and accolades.

Rachel Podger is widely recognised as one of the great violinists of her time – she won a Gramophone Award for her recording of Vivaldi’s La Stravaganza in 2003.

Gary Cooper is established as one of the foremost ambassadors of the harpsichord and fortepiano - in particular, as an interpreter of Bach’s & Mozart’s keyboard music.