Igor Riva - Nicolò Paganini: 24 Caprices Op. 1 (For Unaccompanied Violin) (2023)

In other situations, physical prowess is a value by itself: an athlete who can jump higher or longer than other athletes has achieved his or her end, or telos. The sacrifices needed for obtaining such prowess are rewarded by the mere result, by prowess itself. Victories and triumphs at the Olympic Games may of course be another goal of our athlete, but as concerns sport in itself and by itself, a technical result is not a means, but an end.
Playing a musical instrument has, of course, a physical and at times athletic dimension. Practice similar to an athlete’s is needed in order to obtain increasingly better results: and these results, at times, may be strikingly similar to those pursued in sports. When musicians practise with the metronome, they increase speed progressively, just as athletes check their results on a chronometer. However, most musicians and audience members would be utterly scandalized, were the musical world to reward mere speed. An athlete who breaks the world record on the distance of 100 meters is unanimously acclaimed. A violinist who plays a Sonata by Bach quicklier than another is not applauded “just for this”. Unless this violinist “makes music”, his or her speed counts only relatively.
So, seemingly, there is a dichotomy between technique and art. Or, rather than a dichotomy, technique is a servant of art, a means to an artistic end. Still, in the case of Paganini’s Caprices, the border between art and technique is not so clear. And the fact that the Greek techne is translated as ars, artis into Latin gives food for thought. In fact, should a violinist play a Capriccio by Paganini at half the normal tempo, but with great expressivity and beautiful tone, his or her performance would hardly qualify as a masterly execution. If one plays Paganini’s Caprices, then his or her technique counts a lot. Precision, skill, agility, speed: these are “athletic” qualities, without which, however, there will be no “artistic” performance of the Caprices.
And Paganini seems to have been perfectly aware of this. Not by chance, he dedicated the collective publication of the Caprices as his op. 1 “alli artisti”, “to the Artists”. Silently, this was to be intended as “for artists only”, or, as one is sometimes warned by advertisements, “don’t try this at home”. Not for amateurs. Not for dilettantes. But also not for those who cannot see ars behind the screen of techne, art behind technique.
In fact, if one of the goals of musical artists is to elicit emotions and to move their audience, and this is what “art” consists of, is wonder, is amazement not an emotion? If the audience is left gaping after witnessing something previously unheard-of, is the audience not moved? And if musicians listening to an extraordinarily virtuosic performance will not sleep for several nights and feel that they must achieve the same, are they not moved?
And this was precisely what happened with Paganini’s concerts and recitals. Outside the vocal field – where superstars were already common – Paganini was the first instrumentalist to achieve the status of idol of the crowds.
He had been born in Genoa. His father, not a musician himself, foresaw his child’s potential and encouraged him to practise strenuously. Allegedly, Nicolò’s mother had had a premonition, in the form of a dream, in which she was foretold that her son would become the world’s greatest violinist.
One could say that Paganini’s technique was the result of self-teaching and lots of practice, together with plenty of natural gifts (including a pathological physical condition which, however, allowed him to do impossible things on his violin). He did not receive long, powerfully structured teaching, but he merely practised until exhaustion. He undertook his first concert tour as a teenager, and he immediately realised that he had to play only his own works, not those written by others. He became very jealous of his pieces, quickly understanding that they were the public face of his extraordinary talent. They could be played by him and by him alone, and he was careful not to leave scores unattended or not to be overheard when practising.
In spite of his talent and bravura, however, he soon became tired with the life of the travelling virtuoso, and, between 1801 and 1805, he virtually abandoned the concert stage and, seemingly, the violin too, dedicating himself to agriculture and to guitar. For the six-stringed instrument, he wrote numerous pieces, also pairing it with the violin. In 1805 he took the violin back from the case, and accepted an offering of employ by Princess Elisa Baciocchi, Napoleon’s sister, in Lucca (Tuscany). In 1809 he resumed his concert tours, at first limited within the borders of the Italian peninsula (which was not yet a State, of course), and later throughout Europe (from Vienna to Dresden and Warsaw, from Berlin to Paris and London). Everywhere, he was hailed as a genius, acclaimed as a prodigy, feared as someone who – as people whispered – had sold his soul to the devil in order to obtain such an impossible technique. The greatest musicians of his time – from Rossini to Chopin, from Schumann to Liszt and many others – were in awe of his technique and enthralled by his performances. Chopin sought to emulate him and his Caprices with his own 24 piano Etudes; Liszt probably did manage to create a comparable technique on the piano, and demonstrated his debt to Paganini in the many pieces directly and openly inspired by his works (including the 6 Etudes d’Execution transcendante d’après Paganini). Schumann had similar ambitions, but, in the effort of obtaining an independence of the fingers similar to Paganini’s (who probably was so endowed as a side-effect of the genetic syndrome he had), he only managed to damage his fingers so seriously that there could be no question of a career as a piano virtuoso. Notwithstanding this, Schumann wrote interesting piano accompaniments for the Caprices, with a twofold goal in mind: on the one hand, to slightly ease the violinist’s task by providing a harmonic support for intonation; on the other, to make the Caprices more palatable to contemporaneous listeners, who were not used to performances on the unaccompanied violin. (Bach’s Solos were not played for the same reason).
Thus, it can truly be said that technique was art and art was technique, at least in Paganini’s case. And this is true also for a philosophical reason. Artists express the aspirations, ideals, aesthetic values of their era. And one of the main traits of the Romantic mystique was the cult of the hero (and particularly of the solitary hero), of the genius (and especially of the isolated genius). Paganini frequently played unaccompanied, or, if accompanied, the orchestra or piano (or guitar) part was evidently subordinated, and by many lengths, to the solo violin. He stood on the concert stage, with his exceptional height, long fingers and black hair, as somebody from another world; and even the rumours about his “pact with the devil” contributed to this otherworldly aura. Thus, the wonder, awe and amazement he provoked, and the quasi-religious veneration (between adoration and fear) he attracted were among the most cherished and typical feelings of the Romantic soul. Today’s disenchanted world might find it difficult to understand how this mystique was ingrained in the Romantic world.
The 24 Caprices, written sometime between 1805 and 1817, and issued by the major Italian publisher, Giulio Ricordi, are an extraordinary catalogue of almost all that can be done on a violin and with a violin. Many of the techniques on which each Capriccio focuses were at least perfected, if not outright created by Paganini. Certainly, he was one in a line of great Italian virtuosi of the violin, such as Pietro Antonio Locatelli and Giuseppe Tartini; however, neither of them had dreamed of some impossible challenges Paganini would insert in his oeuvre. For years, the sheer technical difficulty of the Caprices had labelled them as unplayable; and while isolated Caprices were occasionally tackled by the most daring virtuosi, the feat of playing them in a row was considered as simply impossible for decades. However, they are conceived as concert pieces, not just as Etudes: the dedication “alli artisti” makes this explicit, but also as a mere listening experience they are captivating, pleasurable, not just thrilling. There is humour, magic, expressivity, fantasy galore, and the effort to constantly transcend the violin not just in terms of “notes per second”, but also of timbre: Paganini frequently prescribes to imitate a horn, or a flute, or a fanfare.
This Da Vinci Classics production is the demonstration that the challenges of Paganini’s Caprices can be constantly brought to a new level, just as every world record encourages the next prodigy of athletics to beat it. Igor Riva, the protagonist of this CD, recorded the Caprices in a row, with no editing: it is a true live performance, refraining even from the commonly accepted retouches which do not disqualify a “live” as a “live”. And, furthermore, Riva is also planning to record them once more, but in Schumann’s version – with piano accompaniment. The gauntlet is thrown down.
I 24 Capricci, scritti tra il 1805 e il 1817 e pubblicati dal più importante editore italiano, Giulio Ricordi, sono uno straordinario catalogo di quasi tutto ciò che si può fare su un violino. Molte delle tecniche su cui si concentra ogni Capriccio sono state perlomeno perfezionate, se non addirittura create da Paganini. Per anni, la pura e semplice difficoltà tecnica dei Capricci li ha fatti considerare come insuonabili; e mentre Capricci isolati sono stati occasionalmente affrontati dai virtuosi più audaci, l’impresa di suonarli in fila è stata considerata semplicemente impossibile per decenni. Tuttavia, sono concepiti come pezzi da concerto, non solo come studi: sono accattivanti, piacevoli, non solo emozionanti. C’è umorismo, magia, espressività, fantasia a volontà, e lo sforzo di trascendere costantemente il violino non solo in termini di “note al secondo”, ma anche di timbro: Paganini prescrive spesso di imitare un corno, un flauto o una fanfara.
Questa produzione Da Vinci Classics è la dimostrazione che le sfide dei Capricci di Paganini possono essere costantemente portate a un nuovo livello, proprio come ogni record mondiale incoraggia il prossimo prodigio dell’atletica a batterlo. Igor Riva, il protagonista di questo CD, ha registrato i Capricci di fila, senza alcun montaggio: si tratta di una vera e propria esecuzione dal vivo, che si astiene anche dai ritocchi comunemente accettati che non squalificano un “live” come “live”. Inoltre, Riva ha in programma di registrarli nuovamente, ma nella versione di Schumann, con accompagnamento al pianoforte. Il guanto di sfida è gettato.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2023