The works for solo violin recorded on this album do not belong to the normal repertory performed by modern or baroque violinists, with one exception: H.I.F. von Biber’s Passacaglia. One of these works is part of the great baroque organ repertory: J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV565. We do not know if the celebrated version of Toccata and Fugue BWV565 for organ is the original draft or only a transcription. The hypothesis that this work was written for a bowed instrument and then transcribed for organ is based on the presence of unique (or rare) elements found in Bach’s keyboard writings. This is corroborated by the fact that the fugue subject and other various episodes seem to have been thought of for a stringed instrument rather than a keyboard.

Also on this CD, some of the famous Fantasias for solo violin by Telemann, some sonatas by Tartini, played without the bass – in a letter Tartini tells us he often performed them in that way – and also the Gulliver Suite for two violins by Telemann: each movement describes a situation from Swift’s story through expedient rhetoric both unusual and comic.