In Search of the Perfect Instrument
Written by Bill Kent | Photos by Shannon Ayres
For a half-century, luthiers Peter and Wendela Moes have been in pursuit of the perfect violin, viola, and cello.
“We give each instrument as much time as it requires,” Peter says. They are currently finishing a cello in the workshop of their Warrenton home.
“And we don’t make copies,” insists Wendela. “Many violin makers will do that. To us, a copy is like making furniture. It’s antithetical to why we make instruments.”
The couple strives to make an instrument that sounds equally full and strong at all registers, without favoring any specific strings. The instrument should sound beautiful when young and only get better with age.
“We give each instrument as much time as it requires.” –Peter Moes
Wendela goes on to say that “our instruments must be easy to play. By ‘easy,’ I mean they must be able to do anything and everything the musician wants to do.”
Have they succeeded?
“We like to think we’ve come close,” Peter says. “Each one brings us closer.”
For 43 years, Moes & Moes have made violins, violas, and cellos for globally renowned musicians. They also lease instruments to students, host informal string quartets in their music room, and repair and restore instruments.
When Dorie Peters retired as retail manager of The Inn at Little Washington, she wanted to play her great-grandfather’s 110-year-old violin again. Then she found a hairline crack in the century-old instrument. On her first visit to their house, Peters says the Moeses reminded her “of my wise college professors, so full of knowledge but sharing their wisdom in a very humble way.”
They took her into their workshop, with its shelves of hand tools and windows with views of the surrounding woodland. On a worktable was a nearly completed violin. “I saw that the product of all their hard work made their eyes sparkle,” Peters remembers.
To restore Peters’ violin to playable condition required more than just mending a crack. The Moeses told Peters that they work from 200- to 300-year-old alpine spruce and 40- to 50-year-old maple.
The Moeses replaned the fingerboard and added a new bridge, new bushings in the string pegs, and a new nut, the grooved bar at the top of the fingerboard over which the strings pass. They also adjusted the soundpost and replaced the undersized tailpiece with one of the correct size.
When Peters put the bow to her great-grandfather’s instrument, she was delighted. “We are so fortunate there is such an abundance of talent living amongst us,” Peters says. “I feel very lucky and privileged to have world-class luthiers in our backyard.”
Peter and Wendela have scholars, scientists, musicians, and motorheads in their family. Peter’s father was a Dutch physician and professor; Wendela’s mother was a physicist and her father was a Harvard professor. Everyone learned to play an instrument.
Wendela and Peter also used to race vintage sports cars and are restoring one now. Additionally, Wendela is writing a children’s book about bees, and Peter is building a boat.
“The common thread in our backgrounds is that we are fascinated with how things are put together,” Peter says. “We also love music.”
“All these years, we only made a handful of instruments, on the side, for fun.” –Wendela Moes
They met while attending violin-making school in Mittenwald, Germany. Wendela was looking for a cellist to play in an informal string quartet. Peter agreed and they were soon married.
They did repairs and restoration, beginning in Los Angeles with fellow alumnus Hans Weisshaar. They developed a reputation for being able to fix anything, “even the ones the other shops turned away,” Wendela says. They then moved to London. “We bought, restored, and sold the finest old Italian instruments,” she continues. “They were still affordable back then.”
In 1981, they opened Moes & Moes Violin Makers in New York City, close to Carnegie Hall. “All these years, we only made a handful of instruments, on the side, for fun,” she recalls. “It was about 1985 when old instruments started getting very expensive — even mediocre-sounding ones — and we thought we could do better and started making new ones seriously.”
They soon had so many orders that it didn’t matter where they lived; musicians came to their workshop, be it in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Bavaria, or now Warrenton.
While searching for a place to settle, they visited the Italian town of Cremona, home of such storied violin makers as Giuseppe Guarneri, Andrea Amati, and Antonio Stradivari, known by the Latinized version of his last name as Stradivarius.
Ultimately, “We did not stay in Cremona because we thought there were enough violin makers there already,” Peter grins.
In his lifetime, Stradivari made some 1,100 instruments. The Moeses estimate that they’ve made less than 200.
Two of their cellos belong to Yo-Yo Ma, perhaps the world’s most celebrated classical cellist. “I love the Moes & Moes,” Ma told Strings Magazine of his first Moes & Moes cello, built in 2003. “I think it’s extraordinary. It’s their own model; they collaborated on the instrument, and it’s like the child of both of them.”
In 2017, the Baltimore-born, three-time Grammy Award winner Hilary Hahn was about to play an encore in Munich when her violin’s bridge fell over. The Moeses were in the audience and repaired the violin well enough for Hahn to play it.
In “Evolution of an Artist,” a 2020 documentary about Hahn, Wendela is shown giving Hahn a Moes & Moes violin. Hahn praises it as nearly perfect.
“We did not stay in Cremona because we thought there were enough violin makers there already.” –Peter Moes
The Moeses came to Hunt Country in 2021, following their daughter Phoebe. “She has horses,” Peter says. Their other daughter, artist Saskia, also lives nearby. They chose their house “for its peaceful setting and perfect layout for our work,” Wendela shares.
Every weekday morning begins with Peter and Wendela driving their grandchildren to school. Then they are in their workshop. ML
Published in the May 2025 issue of Middleburg Life.