Showreel
Subscribe
My Clesh
Show videos from all accounts
Show videos from paganini
Paganini caprice 4
Video by
paganini
11 minutes, 33 seconds long
Published 5 January
Keywords: Jack Glatzer The 4th caprice is undoubtedly one of the masterpieces of romantic music. We need only to recall that Schumann compared this to the funeral march of the Eroica symphony of Beethoven and I think of this as being a piece that he might of played on his death bed. The story goes that when Paganini knew he was about to die in that cold miserable room in Nice in 1840 he picked up his violin one last time and played a song that was so sad and so haunting and so beautiful that everyone there by his bedside knew that he was telling them 'Goodbye, farewell' with his violin. And on the last note they said, the violin slipped out of his hands and so did the bow and that was the death of Paganini. The original expression of this story was made in 1842 only two years after the death of Paganini by the Italian writer Domenico Anzaldi and I think it's so moving I'd like to quote it. 'He seized his magic violin, the faithful companion of his earthly pilgrimage, the soother of his cares and in his last hour sent up to heaven with its dying notes, the last sigh with a life that had been one long melody.' [Music] And certainly that one long melody that begins this caprice and which is so broadly and beautifully developed in the middle of the caprice is one of the great melodies that we have for the violin and one of the profound musical communications of any writer of the violin. It brings to mind the suffering of Paganini, his illnesses, his anguish, it's all there on the strings of his instrument. [Music] There are two fast sections in this caprice where Paganini might be remembering his career, the great success of his youth, his travels, the wonderful way he was treated by audiences and by the publics of all Europe and there he his on his death bed. It's gone and he ends with that last wonderful line in which we might recall that the violin slipped from his hands and so did the bow and Paganini died. [Music]
