A Violinist’s Blog

Tartini and his pupils (and theirs!)

Having recently worked again at the ‘Devil’s Trill’ for the first time for years, it began to dawn on me how neglected Tartini’s music is still. I played my way through the op. 1 Sonatas (facsimile available from the Early Music Company) and reminded myself about the fine consistent quality of this music, and apart from the ‘Didone Abbandonata’ G minor Sonata, I was horrified to realise I knew the movements I knew more from accompanying the Tartini-Jacob Concertino for clarinet and strings than anything else!

All this drew me into practising ‘L’arte del arco’ again and re-reading the fascinating letter to Maddalena Sirmen. Hearing Szigeti performing the D minor Concerto on YouTube was another inspiration. What a voice in the wilderness Szigeti was.

There are a huge number of Tartini’s works now recorded and I began to listen methodically: the great variety of sonatas and concertos is quite bewildering but two things stick out at the moment – that Andrew Manze performs the Devil’s Trill unaccompanied and that the so-called ‘Piccole Sonate’ are so little known or indeed under-rated.

And then, there are Tartini’s famous pupils – dozens of them, the composers among them all, along with their master, bridging that gap between the baroque and the classical. The ‘School of Nations’, coming as they do from all over Europe, seem to be just names to many people. Here are a few:

Domenico Dall’Oglio (c. 1700-1764)

J G Graun (1703-1771) (Sonata in A available from Camel Music)

Pasquale Bini (1716-1770) – whose playing was so beautiful it made another violinist die of embarrassment (Sonata in G available from Camel Music)

André-Noel Pagin (c. 1721-1785)

Pieter Hellendaal (1721-1799)

Pietro Nardini (1722-1793)

Domenico Ferrari (1722-1780)

Michele Stratico (1728-1783)

Antonín Kammel (1730-1784/5)

(6 Solos, op 8, are work in progress at Camel Music!),

Gaetano Pugnani (1731-1798)

J G Neumann (1741-1801)