Accardo Plays Paganini: Complete Recordings

Read About This Recording

Here's a real collector's set at a very special price.

Niccolò Paganini was a tremendously important musical figure in the first third of the 19th century, a demonically talented virtuoso violinist-composer who, along with Franz Liszt, created the image of the Romantic performing artist. Yet many of his tremendously difficult compositions have since been dismissed as trashy circus tricks and very little of his music has remained in the repertoire. When the superb violinist Salvatore Accardo recorded most of Paganini's major works in the 1970s, people were finally able to learn that there's a great deal of actual music behind the glitz.

Now, Accardo's recordings have been compiled in a valuable six-CD set. This is by no means the complete works of Paganini — he wrote a huge amount of music for violin and guitar and violin and string chamber ensemble, none of which is included here. But the box does include all six of Paganini's violin concertos (only one of which is played with any frequency anymore), several shorter pieces for violin and orchestra and some finger-twisting solo works, including his still-popular 24 Caprices.

Now, if all the Paganini you've ever heard are a few Caprices and maybe the variations on "God Save the King," you may think of his music as something that's enormous fun while it lasts, but makes you feel dirty afterward. All those double- and triple-stops, all that left-hand pizzicato, all those special effects — there can't be any respectable music under all that, can there?

Yes, indeed. Every Paganini piece has its share of fireworks, but it also abounds with melody; the combination of virtuosity and lyricism is typical of the bel canto style of Italian opera, the sort written by Donizetti and Bellini. Think of a Paganini concerto as a 40-minute opera in which the violin plays all the roles.

Franz Schubert, listening to Paganini's slow movements, praised the violinist-composer's ability to "sing like an angel," something that Schubert knew a thing or two about. So there's clearly more than empty virtuosity going on here. But the breadth and depth of Paganini's music remained unknown from the time of his death to the time of these recordings, because most of the scores were unpublished. Even now, Accardo's recordings are the only readily available versions of much of this music.

Luckily, Paganini's compositions are in expert hands. Accardo has made superb recordings of music as diverse as Mozart's sonatas and Max Bruch's concertos. He also has an astounding technical command of his instrument. As a Gramophone critic wrote of his version of the first two concertos, "Accardo brings to these performances all his formidable virtuosity and artistry, displaying superb technique, pure intonation and an ever present sense of style and good taste. In this he is well matched by the LPO under Charles Dutoit."

—James Reel

Quotes

"Accardo brings to these performances all his formidable virtuosity and artistry, displaying superb technique, pure intonation and an ever present sense of style and good taste. In this he is well matched by the LPO under Charles Dutoit." —Gramophone

Contents

Also, La Primavera Maestosa Sonata Sentimentale; Sonata Con Variazione; Sonata Napoleone; Variations on God Save The King.

London Philharmonic Orchestra; Charles Dutoit, Conductor.