Paganini Rules
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
Macaulay said of Paganini: “. . . long streamy flakes of music fall from his strings, interspersed with luminous points of sound which ascend the air and appear like stars.”
Paganini rules our first 90 minutes, as we hear not only his own Caprice No. 24 bouncing off the strings of Midori’s violin, but also the music of many other composers who used his themes as their springboards. Nathan Milstein plays his own “Paganiniana,” which uses Caprice No. 24 as its motivating force; pianist Leslie Howard plays Liszt’s “Transcendental Paganini Etude No. 1”; the Quarteto Latinoamericano brings us Javier Montiel’s Variations on Paganini’s Capriccio No. 24”; Lutoslavski’s “Variations on a Theme by Paganini” offers Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire a two-piano version of that very familiar No. 24; Sviatoslav Richter plays Schumann’s “Concert Studies on Paganini Caprices,” which does not include No. 24. But worry not! Rachmaninoff to No. 24’s rescue, as pianist Mikhail Pletnev joins Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic in the “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.”
For a much-need change of pace, we hear Brahms’s Horn Trio in E-flat and Antoine Forqueray’s First Suite of Pieces for the Viol. And Shostakovich is still with us; Boris Petrushansky plays his Piano Sonata No. 2. Sally Beamish (whose 48th birthday it is) named her concerto for soprano sax and chamber orchestra “The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone.” What an evocative title! Equally evocative is the music, as it celebrates the coming of light and the turning of seasons. John Harley’s soprano saxophone is the star in this firmament.
Paganini rules our first 90 minutes, as we hear not only his own Caprice No. 24 bouncing off the strings of Midori’s violin, but also the music of many other composers who used his themes as their springboards. Nathan Milstein plays his own “Paganiniana,” which uses Caprice No. 24 as its motivating force; pianist Leslie Howard plays Liszt’s “Transcendental Paganini Etude No. 1”; the Quarteto Latinoamericano brings us Javier Montiel’s Variations on Paganini’s Capriccio No. 24”; Lutoslavski’s “Variations on a Theme by Paganini” offers Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire a two-piano version of that very familiar No. 24; Sviatoslav Richter plays Schumann’s “Concert Studies on Paganini Caprices,” which does not include No. 24. But worry not! Rachmaninoff to No. 24’s rescue, as pianist Mikhail Pletnev joins Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic in the “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.”
For a much-need change of pace, we hear Brahms’s Horn Trio in E-flat and Antoine Forqueray’s First Suite of Pieces for the Viol. And Shostakovich is still with us; Boris Petrushansky plays his Piano Sonata No. 2. Sally Beamish (whose 48th birthday it is) named her concerto for soprano sax and chamber orchestra “The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone.” What an evocative title! Equally evocative is the music, as it celebrates the coming of light and the turning of seasons. John Harley’s soprano saxophone is the star in this firmament.
