Word: paganinis
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Jacques de Menasce: Piano Concerto No. 2 (Vienna State Opera Orchestra conducted by Edmund Appia and the composer at the piano; Vanguard). Like Paganini and Liszt, Composer de Menasce writes his own showpieces. If not exactly a world-shaker, this one is able, sophisticated and full of pianistic beans...
...Paganini treasured the instrument for the rest of his life. He took it home to Genoa, where he devised some of the fantastic technical tricks-such as playing pizzicato with his left hand while bouncing his bow across the strings with his right to create a dazzling cascade of notes-that bewitched audiences all over Europe. On the last night of his life, in 1840, he called for it, and spent some of his last moments improvising on its strings. In his will, he left it to the city of Genoa, for "perpetual conservation...
Popular superstition had long suspected him of a pact with the devil: How else could a man do with a violin what Paganini did? The Genoese enshrined his Guarneri in the city hall-though they were still uneasy about its late owner, and the Pope himself had to launch an inquiry into Paganini's orthodoxy before he could be buried in consecrated ground years later...
...secretary general, a museum official and a notary public gather around the glass case, solemnly break the seal and lift the violin out for an annual tuning and workout. In latter years, a distinguished violinist has been invited to do the job. This year Genoa took out some extra Paganini memorabilia, asked French Violinist Zino Francescatti to give the Guarneri its annual tuning. Perhaps because Francescatti is Paganini's lineal musical descendant (his father studied with Paganini's only real pupil), Genoese decided to give him a still greater honor: a half-hour concert in the city hall...
...such 19th century figures as Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, and Berlioz and developed and refined by virtually every 20th century composer has made greater demands upon woodwind players than upon other instrumentalists. There are few trumpet players today who can play Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, and the Paganini violin concerti dating from the early 19th century--not to mention the violin part in the Brandenburg 4th--still make formidable demands upon today's soloists. But (excepting Mozart) it is to this century that woodwind players must turn for the greatest display of their virtuosity, to Stravinsky and to Ravel...