1918: the war has ended, the world lies in pieces, and Stravinsky turns that shattered reality into music with a story tinged with Faustian overtones, in which a soldier sells his violin to the Devil (a symbol of his soul, his music, his joy). The musical structure is deliberately fragmented and contradictory: Stravinsky blends a military march, American ragtime, Argentine tango, a Lutheran chorale, and a Viennese waltz in an effort to portray a world in fragments, where traditional points of reference no longer hold. The version performed here is scored for a reduced trio—piano, violin, and clarinet—instead of the original chamber ensemble, a choice that makes the sound even more spare and incisive. Meanwhile, the narrator, Mario Incudine, brings the text to life in an Italian that draws on the folk traditions of Southern Italy, with all their orality and physical immediacy.