Clesh: Paganini caprice 22

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Paganini caprice 22

4 minutes, 38 seconds long

Published 1 January

Keywords: Jack Glatzer
Number 22 begins with a simple, charming melody, almost a children's melody. [Music] And in my imagination Paganini might have heard a melody like this in the poor part of Genoa where he passed his dreadful childhood. Outside the window he would have heard the children singing and playing and skipping and he would have loved to join them but he had to practise. So many long hours, so often awakened in the middle of the night to practise again, sometimes even deprived of meals by his father who he writes 'It would be hard to conceive of a stricter father.'. In any case he takes this charming simple tune and makes it immediately Paganiniesque, virtuoso, gives us thirds and then sixths and then the big stretches of tenths and three string chords. That's the opening and closing of the 22nd, and the middle section is reminiscent of the middle section of 13 or 20 or even the demonic qualities of number ten, rattling with flying staccato and ricochet and very quick changes from one string to the other, and trills. [Music] Schumann wrote 'Was it not ecstatic?' that is to hear Paganini. 'Under his hands the driest exercises flame up like Pythian pronouncements.'