Sonatas for solo violin

omposer Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) was a man who was always perfectionistic about himself. The old master was in possession of two qualities which never abandoned him: the sharp and questioning attitude of the scientist and the unfathomable emotion of the artist. The head and the heart coming together in beautiful music!Giuseppe Tartini was a legend in his lifetime, and one of the most influential figures in the golden age of the baroque era. Known as “Il maestro delle Nazioni” Tartini was, according to his contemporaries, a kind and affable man, and his respectable behaviour did not bear any trace of the intemperance he showed as a young man. It is of course possible that a mature man learns to keep his emotions under control, but in the case of a great artist one can say that he chose to wear a mask that hid all underlying passions. Through the performance of violinist Luigi De Filippi on this debut cd, we can catch a glimpse of Tartini’s real expression, the intense and intelligent face of a man who, albeit not exactly orientated towards the future, all the same moved decidedly away from the baroque era. Although Tartini made some msitakes in his life as a young man, this made himto reflect upon himself and on music as well. He for instance delves into the “secret” of music, of its cathartic faculties, of what in music goes straight to the heart and what barely scratches the surface of emotions; he notices that folk music has an eloquence denied to learned music. Of the music of the folk, that he describes as “natural” music, he distills the essence, and employs the fundaments in his sonatas and concertos.