Veronica Kuijken

Sisters Marie and Veronica Kuijken began to play four-hands piano music spontaneously in around 1989, and over the years have intensified their collaboration, by broadening their repertoire (which now runs from baroque to Stravinsky), as well as expanding their opportunities to play together: besides piano four-hands and music for two pianos, they perform song recitals (with Marie singing soprano and Veronica as pianist), violin repertoire (Veronica as violinist, Marie as pianist), and melodramas (Marie as declaimer, Veronica as pianist). Last but not least they specialize together in the fortepiano, playing the copy of an instrument by J.A.Stein which was also used for this CD (Kelecom 1978 after Stein, Augsburg ca. 1788), with repertoire by Mozart (four-hands, two fortepianos, songs and arias, violin sonatas) and Haydn (Lieder and the cantata Arianna a Naxos, performed with baroque gesture). 
Through the years both artists have done many concerts together. They have also devised special programmes, including one around the life of Goethe (with songs by ten composers to his texts), comic potpourri programme, melodramas such „Enoch Arden“, a theatre production based on the letters of Mozart (working with Italian actor Marco Paoli as Mozart), and early or forgotten song repertoire by Zumsteeg, Reichardt and other composers. 
This CD is one of the fruits of their many years of playing together in a shared spirit, which –it cannot be denied but on the other hand, should not be too strongly stressed – is partly determined by the musical household in which they grew up, as the daughters of baroque specialist and conductor of La Petite Bande, Sigiswald Kuijken.