30 Sonate Piccole 5

In the last years of his life, the composer, violinist and swordsman Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) laboured at a vast cycle of sonatas for solo violin. The resulting manuscript offers the most important composition for solo violin after Bach and, at six hours in duration, the largest integrated work for the instrument. This first complete recording is based on a fresh study of the source and includes a number of works deciphered from Tartini's shorthand and overlooked in earlier editions. These 'Little Sonatas' tread a delicate line between Baroque formality and proto-Romantic passion, occasionally illuminated with an echo of the folk-fiddling of his Slovenian homeland.