Paganini Guitar Dual

Paganini’s string quartets with guitar are amongst his very finest chamber compositions. Written for friends and private performances they reveal the care he took in their construction. The dialogues in Quartet No. 6 are conversational but Nos. 11 and 13 are more advanced – here formal ingenuity and melodic creativity are fused with great character. Paganini’s feel for aria-like lyricism, for operatic richness, conveyed with a variety of musical ideas, is at its zenith in these works.

Paganini’s string quartets with guitar are amongst his very finest chamber compositions. Written for friends and private performances they reveal the care he took in their construction. The dialogues in Quartet No. 6 are conversational but Nos. 11 and 13 are more advanced – here formal ingenuity and melodic creativity are fused with great character. Paganini’s feel for aria-like lyricism, for operatic richness, conveyed with a variety of musical ideas, is at its zenith in these works.

Dynamic, the independent Italian record label, based close to Paganini’s birthplace in Genoa, has compiled this ten disc set of their previously issued Paganini recordings. It seems that several of these recordings were receiving their first recording. Although this box includes the complete edition of Paganini’s fifteen quartets for strings and guitar; the three string quartets and a number of other chamber works there is certainly much of Paganini’s chamber music not included here.

Nicolò Paganini’s Quartets for Strings and Guitar are among his finest chamber compositions. The First Guitar Quartet was a wedding gift from Paganini to his younger sister; and both this and the Second Quartet share neo-classical poise with warmly expressive romantic lyricism. The Ninth Quartet features sweet and melancholy moods containing some of Paganini’s most disarmingly simple melodies, and as the composer himself stated, ‘a very fanciful minuet and a moving trio’.

Paganini’s string quartets with guitar are amongst his very finest chamber compositions. Written for friends and private performances they reveal the care he took in their construction. The dialogues in Quartet No. 6 are conversational but Nos. 11 and 13 are more advanced – here formal ingenuity and melodic creativity are fused with great character. Paganini’s feel for aria-like lyricism, for operatic richness, conveyed with a variety of musical ideas, is at its zenith in these works.