Extraits de Concert: Corelli - Mozart - Tartini - Elgar: Charlotte Meyer, Violin - Virginie Falquet, Piano (Live)

Arcangelo CORELLI: Sonata, Op. 5, No. 12, “La Follia”: Thème et 23 variations – Giuseppe TARTINI: Sonata in G Minor, “Il trillo del diavolo”: I. Larghetto affettuoso – II. Allegro – III. Andante-Allegro-Adagio – Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART: Violin Sonata No. 21 in E Minor, K. 304: I. Allegro – II. Tempo di Minuetto – Edward ELGAR: Salut d’amour, Op. 12

Charlotte Meyer, Violin
Virginie Falquet, Piano

Arcangelo Corelli was the most famous violinist of his time. He practiced his art mainly in Rome, where he benefited from the patronage of several high-ranking individuals, from Queen Christine of Sweden to Cardinal Ottoboni. He had the opportunity to conduct orchestras, some of them large — over 200 musicians — as well as smaller ensembles. His work was published with great success throughout Europe. Corelli left us a concentrated body of work: six opuses, concerti and sonatas. His most famous sonata is the twelfth in Opus 5, which consists of variations on the Follia aria, originally a dance from Spain: 23 variations, including a cadenza left to the performer’s improvisational verve, which sounds here modern and a little… diabolical!

Giuseppe Tartini was born in Pirano, near Trieste. His parents intended him for an ecclesiastical career, but Giuseppe refused and went to Padua to study law. He then developed a passion for fencing. But in the meantime he fell in love with a niece of the local cardinal, Elisabetta Premazore, whom he secretly married in 1710. Accused of kidnapping by the cardinal, he had to flee, disguised as a pilgrim, finding refuge in a monastery in Assisi where the abbot was a relative. It was here that he took up violin studies again, with the Czech Bohuslav Matěj Černohorský. He plays in church, behind a curtain… which one day blows away! Tartini thought he was lost, but the cardinal forgave him, thanks to his wife’s intercession, and came to fetch him back to Padua in 1714. It was probably in Assisi in 1713 that he dreamt of the devil and, according to him, the devil borrowed his violin and played him a sonata: “… I experienced so much surprise, rapture and pleasure that I lost my breath. I was awakened by this violent sensation. I immediately picked up my violin, in the hope of recapturing some of what I had just heard, but to no avail. The piece I then composed is, in truth, the best I’ve ever done, and I still call it the Devil’s Sonata.”

More than half a century later, at the age of 22, the young Mozart was on tour in Paris, accompanied by his mother. But she suddenly died of “fevers”… In his grief, he composed the Sonata in E, the only minor work in his entire collection. A dark first movement reflects the young musician’s tormented, “Sturm und Drang” character, while the second movement leads the work towards a consoling, already Schubertian appeasement.

Pierre Hugli

DI-1715 Booklet.pdf