Souvenir de Paganini (1829)

When Chopin first heard Paganini he was a little younger than Liszt and Schumann when they first heard him and, being out of the mainstream in Warsaw, rather less sophisticated. So, while Paganini’s violin playing was a revelation to his colleagues, who couldn’t wait to realise its implications in piano terms, Chopin’s immediate reaction was nowhere near as radical. Indeed, he attached so little importance to his Souvenir de Paganini, which is generally assumed to have been written during or just after Paganini’s visit to Warsaw in 1829, that he didn’t bother to preserve the manuscript: it is only because a friend took good care of it that the work survived and reached publication in 1881.

Paganini gave no fewer than six concerts in Warsaw between May and July 1829 and would almost certainly have played his Carnival de Venise during that time. Certainly, it was the main theme of that work, the popular song “O, Mamma, mamma cara,” that Chopin chose for his tribute to the violinist-composer. While it did not inspire the best in him – the harmonic structure is no more than basic and the left-hand barcarolle figuration scarcely imaginative – the variations display a wealth of melodic decoration, some of it in the manner of Paganini himself. Chopin’s more considered answer to Paganini would be the Études Op10 which he started in 1829 and completed three years later.