PF2023 Brochure - Flipbook - Page 8
FRITZ KREISLER (1875-1962)
Recitativo and Scherzo-Caprice, Op 6
Paganini’s monumental twenty-four Caprices for
solo violin.
The great Austrian violinist-composer Fritz Kreisler
dedicated this work to his friend, ‘Le Maître et L’ami’,
the equally famous Belgian violin virtuoso and
composer Eugène Ysaÿe. The Recitativo and ScherzoCaprice, Op 6, written in 1911, exemplifies Kreisler’s
populist yet virtuoso writing.
Devil’s Minion was written for Joo Yeon Sir and
commissioned by the 2018 Lichfield Festival.
Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade
NICCOLÒ PAGANINI (1782-1840)
Caprice in B flat, Op 1 No 13;
Caprice in A minor, Op 1 No 24
GRAŻYNA BACEWICZ (1909-1969)
Caprice No 2
Paganini’s Caprices were composed over a fifteenyear period, from 1802 until 1817, finally published
in 1820 by Ricordi as Ventiquattro capricci per
violino solo, composti e dedicati agli artisti da Nicolò
Paganini. They were grouped into three separate
books containing respectively six, six and twelve
caprices. At this time, it was usual to dedicate such
a work to a patron, but Paganini’s dedication ‘to the
artists’ was quite unique.
Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz’s Caprices for
solo violin are so idiomatic that they could not
have been conceived for any other instrument.
A virtuoso violinist and pedagogue, she wrote
extensively for the violin – seven concertos, sonatas,
a huge catalogue of chamber music and three
sets of Caprices for solo violin. In each of these, we
hear a microcosm of Bacewicz’s distinctly personal
harmonic language; Caprice No 2 dates from 1952
and combines double-stopped trills, harmonics and
ricocheted chords, all combined in a folk-inspired
soundscape that remains unique to its composer.
Caprice No 13 in B flat has the nickname ‘The
Devil’s Laughter’, which probably derives from the
descending chromatic thirds at its opening and
closing and not, as might be expected, from the
diabolical difficulty of the central section.
NINFEA CRUTTWELL-READE (b 1989)
Devil’s Minion
The twenty-fourth Caprice, in A minor, which
Paganini dedicated to himself, starts with the
well-known theme followed by eleven variations,
showcasing a wide variety of techniques. The
theme, one of the best-known in all music, has had
innumerable uses by other composers – Brahms,
Rachmaninov (Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini),
Lutosławski and Andrew Lloyd Webber to name
only four. Almost all Paganini’s technical devices for
the left hand are thrown in here (including left-hand
pizzicato) but he uses only legato bowing in most of
the variations.
The German poet Heinrich Heine offered an
evocative portrait of the Italian virtuoso Niccolò
Paganini in his prose work Florentine Nights (1837),
remembering him as ‘a dead man risen from the
grave, a vampire with a violin’. Described by his
contemporaries as the ‘devil’s minion’ or ‘devil’s
violinist’, Paganini astounded audiences with
extravagant virtuosity and unorthodox extended
techniques. This short solo work for violin seeks
to capture something of that aura, responding to
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