Paganini profile

“What a man, what a violin, what an artist!” wrote Franz Liszt shortly after hearing Paganini in a charity concert in Paris in 1832. “Heavens! What sufferings, what misery, what tortures in those four strings.” His immediate reaction was not only to attempt to do for the piano what Paganini had done for the violin but also to to write virtuoso piano versions of a selection of the by then famous 24 Caprices for solo violin. Robert Schumann, who wrote in his diary of the “incredibly enchanting” effect of Paganini’s playing, did much the same thing at much the same time.

Paganini was not as great a composer as he was a violinist: his five violin concertos need a soloist of something like his voltage to secure the electrifying effect they had in his day. A listener to the average performance of these works could be excused for wondering what it was that moved Rossini to declare that if he had become an opera composer Paganini would have ‘knocked out all of us.“ The 24 Caprices, however, are on an exalted level of their own. More than studies in violin playing, more than an unparalleled extension of instrumental technique, they have been a source of fascination for some of the greatest of all musical minds. The continuing career of the 24th Caprice in A minor, based on a theme which has launched a thousand variations – notably by Brahms, Rachmaninov and Lutoslawski but many others too – is sufficient demonstration of that.

Gerald Larner © 2010