Susanne Scholz and Carmen Leoni share the common love of the special approach required by different instruments and the different ways of touching and setting their strings in motion.
Carmen Leoni has experience on all types of historical keyboard instruments: She is a graduated organist and has studied harpsichord, fortepiano and clavichord.
While the length of a note on the organ is determined directly by the length of the sound, on the plucked instruments the length of the sound can only be shown by the shape of the sound through the varying speed of the hand movement at the first impact – not by the actual length of the sound as e.g. on the organ. On the other hand, the organ has much less possibility of a differentiated articulation or "touching" of a sound. After the initial phase the sound remains steady – especially with electronic bellows. The idea of the violin sound today lies between both those ideas, today’s (longer and heavier) bow being moved in a mostly horizontal movement of the arm. In this project’s hypothesis, the point of departure for bowed instruments in the 16th century was much closer to the sound production of plucked or struck instruments, employing more of a vertical movement of the (shorter, lighter and more curved) bow.
The keyboard instrument which comes closest to this idea is the Clavichord: after the first impact, the finger remains in steady contact with the string through the key and the tangent, being able to sustain and to modulate of the sound also after the first impact.
For Susanne Scholz and Carmen Leoni, the collaboration with violin and clavichord creates a constant dialog between the two artists and their instruments, which they share with the audience in a special atmosphere of subtlety and sensitivity.
After their concerts in Graz an Urbino in 2023, Carmen Leoni has become cooperation partner in the research project "The Restored Speech" which Susanne Scholz has launched in December 2023.
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