Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Virtuoso

Paganini Devil’s Violin or Genius?

Did Niccolò Paganini sell his soul to the Devil? At the very least, he must have leased it.

Paganini, born on this date in 1782, is often stated to have been the greatest violinist who ever lived. He took up the mandolin at the age of 5, and was playing his first fiddle by 7. His professional career began at 15, when he embarked on his first solo tour.

In an era full of extraordinary violinists, Paganini left them all behind. In fact, so far did he outstrip his peers, there were rumblings that, if he himself had not bargained his soul, then surely his mother must have.

At 13, he was sent to study with renowned violinist Alessandro Rolla. Rolla quickly ascertained that there was nothing he could teach this terrifying prodigy. So he referred him to his own teacher, Ferdinando Paer, who in turn handed him up the ladder to his teacher, Gasparo Ghiretti.

Despite Paganini’s preternatural talent, his early success began to take its toll. Almost immediately, he suffered a nervous breakdown and began drinking heavily. He also became a prodigious gambler and a prolific womanizer.

Combined with his uncanny abilities as a performer, his flamboyant lifestyle laid the foundation for the Paganini legend. It was said he once murdered a woman and used her intestines to string his violin, so that her imprisoned soul could be heard screaming as he played. Some claimed that sulfur could be smelled during his performances. Another swore that he saw the Devil standing beside him. Yet another, that he was the Devil himself. Paganini doppelgangers began to appear, bearing horns and hooves. Once, lightning struck the end of his bow as he played. Or so the stories went.

And if you saw Paganini, you’d probably believe it was all true. He was tall and thin, with hollow cheeks and pale skin, thin-lipped and adorned in black. His pallid hand, with unusually long, flashing fingers, raced hypnotically up and down the strings of his violin like an enormous, acrobatic spider. Its unusual span and uncanny flexibility have been attributed in modern times to genetic irregularities, Marfan’s syndrome and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Or perhaps he simply sold his soul to the devil.

Paganini’s skills on the violin were unparalleled. It’s said that he could play twelve notes per second. He performed without sheet music, contorted, and swung wildly about the stage. His outlandish mannerisms earned him the nickname “Rubber Man.”

Already sickly for most of his life, he contracted syphilis in 1822. This was treated with mercury, which led to further issues. In 1834, he contracted tuberculosis. He recovered, but retired from the stage later that year, at the age of 54. He spent his last years teaching.

Shortly before his death, of larynx cancer, at 57 in 1840, a priest arrived to administer last rites, but Paganini turned him away. It might have been because he was convinced he wasn’t going to die. Or it could have been because of… something else.

Paganini’s final tour was posthumous. When the Church refused to bury his body in consecrated ground, it was sent around Europe for the next four years, where it lay in state. When burial was still denied, it spent a year in a cellar. Then it was taken to a leper house. After that, it was moved to a cement vat in an olive factory. Then to a private house. Finally, Pope Gregory XVI allowed Paganini’s remains to be laid to rest in La Villetta Cemetery in Parma.

Niccolò Paganini was a Romantic icon, with a capital “R.” Hector Berlioz, himself no slouch in the seething Romantic department, wrote “Harold in Italy” so that Paganini could show off his new viola. Paganini didn’t think the solo part was flashy enough, and though he came eventually to admire the piece, he never actually played it. Even so, he continued to help Berlioz financially during his later years. He also became a good friend of Rossini.

Numerous other composers were inspired by Paganini’s own music. Liszt, another kindred spirit, who modeled his own concert persona after Paganini’s, wrote a set of “Paganini Etudes.” And how many composers have written sets of variations on Paganini’s famous 24th Caprice? Franz Lehár even wrote an operetta, highly fictionalized, about a romance between the virtuoso and Napoleon’s sister, Princess Anna Elisa.

Whether or not you believe the legends, Paganini sure could play like the Devil. Happy birthday, Niccolò Paganini, wherever you are!

Alexander Markov plays Paganini’s 24th Caprice

Arrau plays Liszt’s “Paganini Etude No. 6”

Liszt’s “Paganini Etudes,” complete

Rachmaninoff, “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” at the Proms, with Stephen Hough the soloist (the famous 18th Variation occurs 15 minutes in)

Brahms, “Variations on a Theme by Paganini,” played by Michelangeli

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVRCKnXNHE8

Boris Blacher, “Orchestral Variations on a Theme by Paganini”

Witold Lutoslawski, “Paganini Variations,” with Argerich and Kissin

From Lehár’s “Paganini”

Alfredo Casella, “Paganiniana”

Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 2 “La campanella” (with its famous “little bell” finale beginning about 19 minutes in)

October 27, 2021
Franz Liszt Virtuoso Visionary Rebel

In his years before the public, he was recognized as a pianist of diabolical stamina. Franz Liszt was the inventor of the modern piano recital. While most of his rivals cultivated their reputations on the more intimate salon circuit, Liszt graduated to the larger halls. He was the first to turn the piano sideways, the better to show off his long hair and noble profile, like that of a Hungarian falcon.

He made mincemeat of the delicate instruments of his day, which were unable to withstand his musical onslaughts. In a masterstroke of showmanship, he always kept a spare on stage. On at least one occasion, he went to head-to-head with an orchestra. He mesmerized his audiences with his superhuman transcriptions and paraphrases, whipping them into frenzies. The ladies of Europe forgot their manners and rushed the stage. Skirmishes broke out, as they wrestled for his gloves and cigar butts, carelessly, calculatedly, left behind.

Liszt enjoyed enormous fame. He accumulated staggering wealth. And he enjoyed prodigious love affairs. Then all at once, at the age of 35, he simply walked away. He knew he was more than a vulgar showman, and he was eager to explore other avenues. He may have been a man who savored the privileges of celebrity, but he was also an intellectual and an artist of the spirit. In fact, he was one of the most innovative musical thinkers who ever lived.

Among his innumerable achievements, he pioneered a technique known as thematic transformation, which he employed in his own compositions, as a radical alternative to traditional classical form. He is also credited with the creation of the symphonic poem. Without Liszt, there would have been no Wagner as we know him. In fact, Romantic music would have had to find its own way.

He also happened to be extraordinarily generous. He never took payment from any of his pupils. He programmed the operas of Wagner and Berlioz, when nobody else would touch them. He selflessly promoted the works of Grieg, Smetana, Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Borodin, and many others. He was lured back to the concert stage only for charitable purposes – for the relief of victims of fire and flood, in support of political refugees, and to raise money for a Beethoven monument in Bonn.

When Wagner was on the run as a fugitive for his role in the 1849 Dresden uprising, Liszt, then a prominent conductor at the Weimar court, not only gave him the money to flee to Switzerland, he endorsed Wagner’s courtship of his (already married) daughter. Wagner’s “Tristan chord” would send shockwaves throughout Europe, changing music forever, but in actuality it was only one of the many innovations he borrowed from his future father-in-law.

Liszt’s later music at times anticipates the experiments of the 20th century, by composers as diverse as Debussy, Scriabin, and Schoenberg. “My sole ambition as composer,” he once pronounced, “is to hurl my lance into the infinite space of the future.”

For his pains, he was unrelentingly lambasted by his critics and intrigued against by jealous rivals. At various points throughout his career, he was dismissed for pandering to the mob, ridiculed as a charlatan and a hypocrite, and shunned for his long-term relationships with two women who fled troubled marriages.

Yet there is a depth and spirituality in his greatest music that defies all charges. Liszt may have been something of a glamor puss, but he was not a shallow man. He was an intellectual, and he was also devoutly religious, even to the point of taking minor orders and living in a cell in Rome. In all, he was a fascinating amalgam of charlatan and visionary, sinner and saint, peacock and messiah.

Happy birthday, Franz Liszt (1811-1886). One thing you were not was listless!

“Totentanz” (“Dance of Death”), 1849, rev. 1859

“Nuages gris” (“Grey Clouds”), gnomic and existential,1881

“La lugubre gondola,” Liszt’s premonition of Wagner’s funeral procession through the canals of Venice, 1882

Transcription of Saint-Saëns’ “Danse Macabre,” 1874

“Mephisto Waltz No. 1,” 1860

“A Faust Symphony,” 1857

October 22, 2020
Franz Liszt Superstar Sinner Saint

Charlatan. Visionary. Sinner. Saint. Showman. Superstar.

Franz Liszt’s prowess at the keyboard is still spoken of in tones of awe. This inventor of the modern piano recital lent spectacle and showmanship to Orphean musicality and transcendental technique. He tore through pianos as if they were made out of paper and reduced the ladies of Europe to skirmishes over his cigar butts or the calculated neglect of a glove.

He loved the attention. He loved the applause. He loved the women.

Then all at once he stopped. Liszt retired from the concert stage at the age of 35, returning thereafter only for charitable causes – for the relief of victims of fire and flood, in support of political refugees, and to raise money for a Beethoven monument in Bonn.

He may have been a man who savored all the privileges of his celebrity, but he was also an intellectual and an artist of the spirit. He was devoutly religious for his entire life – even taking minor orders and living in a cell in Rome for a few years at middle age – and he was unfailingly generous to others. He never took payment from any of his pupils, and selflessly promoted the work of Grieg, Smetana, Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Borodin and many more.

Throughout his career, he was lambasted by critics for pandering to the mob. He was ridiculed as a charlatan and a hypocrite. He was shunned for his long-term relationships with two women who fled troubled marriages, and intrigued against by jealous rivals at the Weimar court for championing the works of Berlioz and Wagner.

He helped the latter, a political fugitive for his role in the 1849 Dresden uprising, to flee the country, and even endorsed Wagner’s marriage to Liszt’s (already married) daughter. Wagner’s “Tristan chord” would send shockwaves throughout Europe, changing music forever, but in actuality it was only one of the many innovations he borrowed from his father-in-law. Wagner may have been the greater composer, but Liszt was the idea man. He was the soil that allowed Wagner’s genius to flower.

Liszt was one of the most original musical thinkers of the 19th century. His influence rippled down the generations to color the thinking also of Ravel, Scriabin, and Schoenberg. “My sole ambition as composer,” he once pronounced, “is to hurl my lance into the infinite space of the future.”

The future is now, as we celebrate this wildly influential, yet still sorely underrated composer on his birthday with an afternoon of his music, including the epic and seasonally appropriate “A Faust Symphony.”

First, on today’s Noontime Concert, Mimi Stillman and Charles Abramovic will enchant in a program presented as part of Penn State Flute Day (January 13, 2019). They’ll share works by Philippe Gaubert, Daniel Dorff, Heidi Jacob (a world premiere), Francis Poulenc, Antonin Dvorak, and Vittorio Monti. Monti’s “Czardas” will act as a bridge to an afternoon of music by one of Hungary’s greatest masters.

We’ll provide an assist for Liszt, prefaced by a recital by stylish Stillman. Join me for music both notable and noble, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Learn more about Stillman and Abramovic’s upcoming concert of Bach masterworks, with the Dolce Suono Ensemble, at Philadelphia’s Old Pine Street Presbyterian Church, this Sunday at 3 p.m.:

DSE Presents: Bach Masterworks

October 22, 2019
Chet Atkins Classical Guitar Virtuoso

Country legend Chet Atkins performs some of that elitist classical music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D66ywH4mTiI

And it remained in his repertoire:

April 29, 2017

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS