(arr. Kreisler)
Devil's Trill Sonata played by Frederick Grinke
Tartini, that great eighteenth-century violinist, had a somewhat disturbed youth, for he was driven from his native Padua on account of a secret marriage. He took refuge in a monastery at Assisi, worked hard at fiddling, and when he could safely return to Padua built up a noted school of violin playing.
He wrote some eighteen concertos and fifty or sixty violin sonatas. Perhaps the most famous of the sonatas is the ' Devil's Trill' Sonata, said to have been composed after a dream in which the Devil, having entered into a compact to serve the composer, played him a marvellous solo on the violin.