Giuseppe TARTINI (1692-1770)
Secondo Natura (According to Nature)
Sonata in F major Op.1 No.12 B.F4 [20:12]
The Devil's Sonata B.G5 [19:04]
Pastorale in A major Op.1 No.13 B.A16 [12:02]
Sigurd Imsen (baroque violin and Hardanger fiddle)
Tormod Dalen (baroque cello)
Hans Knut Sveen (cembalo)
rec. Jar Church, Norway, June 2014
Blu-ray Audio; Stereo/Surround 5.1 DTS HDMA 24/192 Surround 5.1 (used for review), LPCM 24/192 Stereo + mShuttle and FLAC
2L 2L-112-PABD [51:18]
2L seems to exist on the production of spectacular recordings
of excellent performances of odd repertoire. One has to respect and indeed
praise this specialist company for its efforts. This Tartini disc adds yet
another lustrous issue to the rota. As usual the recording is magnificent
and the accompanying documentation interesting and readable. Can you hear
the 'but' approaching? I do wish they had been more explicit
on the outer packaging about what was actually on the disc, and also more
factually informative about the music and the composer in the notes, interesting
though the notes are.
To be clear: this is a group of three trio sonatas, adding up to a little
over 50 minutes music, by the interesting, but perhaps second-rank, Giuseppe
Tartini. One of the performances is given on the Hardanger fiddle instead
of the violin. There is a little about the fiddle in the notes but it is well
suited to making the sounds of peasant merrymaking and indeed is used in the
work intended by Tartini for performance on a violin tuned scordatura,
effectively mistuned to non-conventional notes. In the Pastorale
the G string is supposed to be tuned up to A and the D up to E and the other
two strings left as normal. This is close to the standard tuning of the Hardanger
fiddle on ADAE - but this has also a set of sympathetic strings beneath the
main four to add colour. It sounds lovely.
Each of the sonatas has three movements and they are quite substantial pieces.
Two of them are from Tartini's Opus 1 set - more accurately one of
the Opus 1 sets because the Tartini publication history is complex and sometimes
the same works got published by different publishers in different sized sets.
The more mysterious is the 'Devil's Sonata' which, it
appears, is not the famous 'Devil's Trill', which is
for solo violin and in G minor not G major and in any case has different movement
markings. None of this is explored or even mentioned in the notes. These focus
on Tartini's theoretical writings and his place in the 'proto-romantic'
period of the Age of Enlightenment. This explains the obscure title of the
disc Secondo Natura because Tartini believed he was inspired by 'the
imitation of Nature'. He saw Nature (note the capital) as superior
to the manmade art of music and the less his compositions owed to musical
artifice the better they became. Make of all that what you will. For me Tartini's
music lacks the vitality and imagination of Vivaldi and the gravity and imagination
of Handel, Corelli and Bach. It does however make for superb baroque easy
listening in these magnificent performances.
Dave Billinge
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