Sonatina in D major

arranged by Lev Atlas for viola and piano (first UK performance)

Caprice No.13

Paganini was not only a wizard on the violin but also a considerable performer on viola and guitar. So he would probably be quite happy to find his Sonatina in D, which looks as though it was written originally for guitar, in arrangements for violin and piano and now, thanks to Lev Atlas, for viola and piano. What matters here is not so much the precise colour of the instrument involved as its agility in coping with the virtuoso scoring. An expert exponent of variation form, Paganini opens the piece with a short but dramatic introduction, presents a comparatively simple theme known as Lully’s “Étoile” and tests the performers’ agility in a series of three extravagant variations and a brief coda.

Paganini’s greatest contribution to music is his Twenty-Four Caprices for solo violin, which were written in about 1805 and first published as his Op.1 in Milan in 1820. They were important not only to string players but also to composers like Chopin, Liszt, Schumann and Brahms, who were inspired by Paganini’s transcendental innovations in technique to do the same kind of thing for the piano. Caprice No.13 in B flat, which Lev Atlas transposes down a fifth in today’s performance, is a poetic study in thirds in the outer sections and an exhilarating exercise in playing across the strings in the exhaustively developed middle section.