Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) has a problem. Or rather: his reputation does. The moment his name is mentioned, the image of the demonic violin virtuoso almost automatically appears, the man whose technical abilities astonished audiences at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The composer behind that image easily remains out of sight. And that is precisely where the appeal of this cd begins.
Paganini – His Music, His Instruments is much more than a collection of works by a famous violinist. The album aims to reconsider the composer Paganini from his love of chamber music and especially for the guitar. Carlotta Dalia and the Goldmund Quartett – Florian Schötz, Pinchas Adt, Christoph Vandory and Raphael Paratore – do so with a special premise: they play on instruments that once belonged to Paganini himself. The four historic Stradivari instruments of the so-called Paganini-Quartett have been with the Goldmund Quartett since 2019; the guitar played by Carlotta Dalia is now kept in the Palazzo Tursi in Genoa and even has Paganini's initials "N.P." worked in ivory in the head plate.
The fact that the five instruments were once played by the same owner could easily have remained a marketing story. That does not happen here. The historic instruments are not an end in themselves, but a means to make a side of Paganini audible that usually receives less attention: the composer who was not exclusively interested in the virtuosic possibilities of the violin, but was deeply connected to the guitar, the viola and the cello. Paganini did not play the piano, and so he consistently turned to the guitar when writing his music; anyone who wants to understand his chamber music parts must actually look at this instrument. No fewer than fifteen quartets for guitar and strings belong to his legacy – a surprisingly rich harvest for someone who remains in the collective memory primarily as a violin composer.
The hierarchy reversed
The programme opens with the Guitar Quartet no. 15 in a minor, MS 42, and it immediately becomes clear that Paganini did not feel bound by the conventions of his time. Whereas usually the first violin takes the honours, here it is the viola player who takes the lead: the piece immediately starts strongly with an extensive, technically demanding solo passage for that instrument, while the rest of the ensemble moves along in support. This is no gimmick: the music continually moves between individual virtuosity and ensemble sound, between questions and answers. The opening Maestoso sounds less solemn than the marking suggests – rather searching and imploring, as if Paganini first wants to have a conversation before the quartet truly unfolds. The musicians of the Goldmund Quartett clearly feel at home here.
Carlotta Dalia's guitar – built by Ory-Koelliker in Paris in 1797 – fits beautifully here: the instrument has a warm, somewhat muted tone that lingers long without ever becoming harsh or sharp. There was deliberate experimentation with tremoli and pizzicati to complement the guitar sound, and it works: the voices complement each other and at certain moments almost completely merge into one another.
The Minuetto a canone shows a completely different side: playful and light, with a nice solo moment for the guitar that is then elegantly taken over by the strings – especially the pizzicati give the whole thing something sparkling. In the Recitativo the opera composer in Paganini comes to the fore most clearly: a pronounced vocal line, carried by melancholy, which Dalia and the quartet restrain and in doing so convince precisely because of that.
Especially the fourth movement, the Adagio cantabile, remains however the most refined moment of the quartet. All virtuosic bravura falls away here for a moment and sound, breath and melodic significance are given space. Paganini reveals himself here as a composer who has much more to say than the cliché of the "devil's violinist" suggests: the music builds almost imperceptibly towards a climax that touches all the more because it is never forced. The final part, the Rondo, then brings back the fire and joy of playing – a finale that does not want to impress but to seduce, and that lets the melody immediately stick in the ear.
Two other faces
After this substantial opening work comes a very different Paganini. Carlotta Dalia takes the guitar alone for the Sonata in A major, op. 3 no. 1, originally for solo violin and here transcribed by Manuel Barrueco. On paper an odd choice, but in practice a very natural transition, because the guitar was precisely the instrument with which Paganini developed his chamber music. Dalia does not try to imitate the violin, and that is precisely where the charm lies: the guitar makes the virtuosity less ostentatious and gives the melodic lines a softer, more restrained colour. It is Paganini without the theatrical exterior.
With the String Quartet nr. 3 in A minor, MS 20, we hear Paganini again without guitar, in classical instrumentation – and precisely for that reason it becomes clear how little sense it makes to regard him as a virtuoso of one instrument alone. The Largo immediately sets an expectant tone, as if something is about to happen, before it passes full of fire into the Allegro. The Minuetto within it is a gem in itself, almost a mini-opera scene: a questioning first violin sometimes receives a deliberately curt answer from the other players, with a lyrical Andantino as an afterthought. The Andante con variazioni is performed with clear alternation between the voices, after which the Presto, following the two more restrained sections that preceded it, again delightfully plays around.
Moreover, it is a quartet that is rarely performed; this recording silently pleads for a place in the concert hall, and provides anyone hearing it for the first time with a different perspective on Paganini. The Goldmund Quartett brings it all with great dedication and a tight, musically mature language refined over many years – the four players complement each other without ever trying to outdo each other in virtuosity.
A strange creature in the mix
Between the two large quartets and the closing Caprice stands Te voglio bene assaje, a nineteenth-century Neapolitan canzone traditionally attributed to Donizetti and arranged here by Carlo Marchione into a contemporary ghiribizzo. The piece is charming and matches Paganini's own ghiribizzi in terms of playfulness – a genre of miniatures in which popular melodies of the day were set in a guitar arrangement.
Yet it is also the only piece on this CD that is not by Paganini himself – an anonymously transmitted melody, in a newly written arrangement. On an album whose entire concept is derived from the idea "his music on his instruments", that is a striking inconsistency. Not that it is a quality issue: Dalia and Marchione deliver an attractive piece, and the link with Paganini's own ghiribizzo tradition is defensible in terms of content. But among the rest of the programme, which does come directly from Paganini, this choice remains peculiar.
The Caprice as closer
The best-known piece on the CD resounds as a closer in an unexpected form: the Caprice nr. 24 for guitar and string quartet, based on Robert Schumann's arrangement, which places the work in an unusual light. The guitar takes the solo function, while the quartet does not merely accompany but with tremolos and pizzicati forms a sound backdrop in which the guitar can remain clear – towards the end that backdrop almost grows into the glow of a small symphonic orchestra, without the guitar ever being overshadowed.
It is precisely here that the whole idea of the CD comes together: not "look at which famous instruments we play", but "listen to how differently this music sounds when it is brought back to an instrumental world close to Paganini himself." Historical authenticity thus becomes not a dogma, but an artistic stimulus.
The man behind the myth
Paganini – His Music, His Instruments does not try to rid the composer of his myth, but to break open the myth. The devil violinist remains, but is joined by another Paganini: the chamber musician, the guitarist, the violist, the melodist. The gathering of the five historical instruments in Brescia for this recording thus has something symbolic – two centuries after Paganini himself held them in his hands, they come together again for music that he himself composed or that directly connects with his musical world. Yet the CD does not make a museum piece of it: the music sounds like music, not like a historical experiment.
Anyone who knows Paganini only from the 24 Caprices will hear here a surprisingly different, and above all much more human Paganini.
