24 Caprices

Paganini was a phenomenal violinist, stunning audiences from an early age with a technique more dazzling than any of his contemporary rivals. In 1820 came a partial explanation of how he made the magic happen with the publication of his 24 Caprices for solo violin, composed over 15 years and dedicated “to the artists”. Paganini intended them to show not just the myriad of technical effects he could produce as a violinist, but also how he shaped these prestidigitations into satisfyingly expressive pieces of music. The ricocheting arpeggios of “Caprice No. 1”, for instance, are devilishly difficult to play, while also conveying an unsettling nervous obsessiveness. In No. 6 the trick is combining trills with the main melody, in the process conjuring a distinct sense of unease and instability. The most famous is the fiendish No. 24, whose enigmatically dancing theme later attracted the attention of composers such as Schumann, Brahms and Rachmaninoff. Paganini’s Caprices unquestionably revolutionised ideas of what the violin was technically capable of playing. But in so doing they also opened up new areas of feeling in music, providing a language in which the febrile emotional world of the Romantic era could find viscerally detailed expression.