Fritz Kreisler's sole extant opus for solo violin (and also one of just a handful of pieces to which he actually did apply opus numbers), the Recitativo and Scherzo, Op. 6 (sometimes Scherzo-Caprice), is one of his most colorful and appealing short works. Unlike so many of his best-known pieces, it is neither arrangement nor adaptation, nor did Kreisler ever try to pass it off as another composer's work. On the contrary, it is pure Kreisler, a few minutes' worth of dramatic musical rhapsody and fireworks that come as a pleasant surprise to the listener who knows Kreisler only as the author of salon-style Viennese dances and faux-Baroque trifles.

The recitativo portion of Recitativo and Scherzo is marked Lento con espressione and unfolds in many short phraselets, beginning with a twofold melodic declamation in D minor and then moving on to double-stops, trills, and slippery chromatic elaboration. The opening gestures are immediately repeated, this time surging forth passionately, up into the instrument's upper register, but then immediately dissolving away into a remarkable series of double-stopped tremolandos (something that, as a player, Kreisler was particularly good at and which figures into several of the concerto cadenzas he wrote) and an eerie passage in harmonics. The scherzo could hardly be more different from the recitativo. Presto e brillante, F major, hustling and bustling forth in buoyant eighth notes, it is day to the recitativo's night, and even the frequent excursions into fiery, unsettled regions cannot dispel its essential good nature.

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