Sunday 5 April 2009

We will never know how Paganini played his 24 caprices. Looking at them dispassionately, they are 24 studies in different bowing techniques, different sonorities of the violin, and exactitude in intonation, especially in double-stopping passages. Paganini exhalts in cross-string bowing and in highlighting the difference between the violin's sonorous G string and brilliant E string. Too often nowadays the capricci are played in race-track style, like Formula One drivers trying to clip 1.2 seconds off the previous contestant. This may have been what Paganini envisaged, but the abundance of tempo markings such as andante, moderato, maestoso, lento and posato suggests that sheer speed was not the aim of all the parts of all the capricci. A pity we have no recordings of him.

I suspect that he may have played the 24 much like Tanja Becker-Bender, on a new CD from Hyperion. One is conscious with Miss B-B of the fact that the caprices were studies in violin sound and technique. Unless the music calls for it, Miss B-B plays accurately, deliberately and with an admirable intelligence. 'Some of her playing is almost a master class in different bowing techniques (much as Paganini had in mind for much of the time, one suspects). I enjoyed this thoughtful, intelligent and technically immaculate CD.

A pity Hyperion did not think more about the recording. We stand around three metres from Miss B-B; too close, the same common defect with solo violin recordings. And either the microphone favoured Miss B-B's rght hand side (G string) or the recording was too bass-heavy, since the G strng sound predominates for much of the time. This is, of course, frequently in line with Paganini's intentions; but too much so.

1 comment:

Lee said...

Some 'i's missing in right and string in your last paragraph. The recording put me off this version - so I did not buy it.