Giuseppe Tartini, composer

Peter Sheppard Skærved, violin
[credit: Matt Grum]

A pleasure from start to finish

There is simply no end to the treasurable music of the Baroque era. What is not already well-known seems just a short way away from being discovered or rediscovered, and what has not been performed anytime recently will surely show up in the concert hall or recorded form quite soon. That so much excellent music has essentially lain fallow for such a long time is an accident of history, now corrected through interest in historic performance practices and a renewed level of attention being paid to composers of Baroque times other than Bach and Vivaldi (but still including them). The case of Giuseppe Tartini’s Sonate piccole for solo violin is instructive. Tartini (1692–1770) is nowadays known almost solely for his ‘Devil’s Trill’ sonata, but there is a great deal more to him and his music than that. A very highly regarded violinist as well as much-admired composer, Tartini in his later years set about creating a cycle of sonatas for violin solo, and ended up writing 30 of them – creating a six-hour grouping that, taken collectively, is the largest integrated work ever written for the instrument. And the sonatas are far more than dry studies: each is carefully structured and elegantly constructed, with virtuoso elements kept at the service of poised and effective music-making. At least that is so in the case of the first six, which are excellently played by Peter Sheppard Skærved on a Toccata Classics CD that is the first volume of the first-ever complete recording of these works. Skærved has a fine sense of Baroque style and an understated virtuosity that fits these pieces very well. He is suitably upbeat, even celebratory, in the major-key works (Nos. 1 in G, 3 in D, 4 in C and the somewhat more understated No. 5 in F); and he brings tenderness and slight melancholy – but only to an appropriate degree – to those in minor keys (Nos. 2 in D minor and 6 in E minor). A full hour of solo-violin music can be a lot to listen to, but just as with Bach’s solo-violin works, Tartini’s encompass such a wide range of moods and techniques, and contain so much that is interesting both technically and emotionally, that they are a pleasure from start to finish.

The Infodad Team Infodad.com