Release Date: 12 January 2005
Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 747313259823
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: PAGANINI
Description
Nicol?? Paganini (1782-1840)Guitar MusicNicol?? Paganini was music's first superstar. His careeras a violinist was attended by inflated concert prices,mass enthusiasm, even hysteria, rumours of supernaturalpowers, a pact with the devil, all supported by a superbviolin technique, a capacity for daring innovation and agenuine musical gift. All very unlike the quiet life of aclassical guitarist.Yet Paganini was a guitarist too, and a very goodone. He wrote: 'I love the guitar for its harmony; it ismy constant companion in all my travels'. He also said,on another occasion, 'I do not like this instrument, butregard it simply as a way of helping me to think'. It isnot a real contradiction: even the most constant ofcompanions can be irritating at times. He chose not toexploit the guitar in the same way as he exploited theviolin. Had he done so, the advances in technique theguitar has seen during the last two or three generationsmight have come a great deal sooner. Only recently hasthe full extent of Paganini's guitar compositions beenrevealed. Few of them were ever published, and whenthe Italian government was offered the collection, theyturned it down. The guitar remained out of fashion for along time, and Paganini's connection with it was all butforgotten. Our modern age is to a large extent concernedwith discovery and revival, and it was inevitable thatPaganini's work should come under scrutiny sooner orlater. Because the guitar compositions do not containthe brilliance that we find in the Caprices for violin, itis easy to dismiss them as inferior, in the sense of 'notso good'. You might as well say that Snowdon isinferior to Mount Everest: it is true only in the literalsense of one mountain being lower than the other, butthey are both mountains, the chief difference being thatone can be approached for a pleasant afternoon's walkand the other cannot.Paganini left a large amount of chamber music thatincludes the guitar, still to be thoroughly explored.Meanwhile, the music for solo guitar is readilyaccessible, and guitarists are discovering it withpleasure. Why has it taken the best part of two centuriesto bring this attractive music to light? Apart from thefact that most of the guitar pieces were never published- though it is worth noting that of his compositions thatwere published during his lifetime, all but the 24 Capricesfor solo violin include the guitar - Paganini had built upsuch a huge reputation as an innovative violinist ofunprecedented brilliance that it was hard to believe thathe played the guitar at a similarly high level. Then, too,the guitar suffered a decline during the nineteenthcentury. Only recently, fuelled by the record industry'sinsatiable demand for new music, has a culture ofresearch grown up in which unheard music by oldcomposers is dragged out of its obscurity, dusted downand found to be not only tolerable but very often goodmusic and well worth reviving.One of the fascinating things about Paganini is theinteraction between h
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Yaqi Yang; Margarita Parsamyan; Robynne Redmon; Minghao Liu; Frank Ragsdale; Kim Josephson; Kevin S
Vilmos Csikos; Olivier Lechardeur; Manon Lamaison
Tomas Cotik; Martingale Ensemble; Ken Selden
