Niccolò Paganini

The Best of

The legendary Genovese violinist Niccolò Paganini (Genoa, 27 October 1782 Nice, 27 May 1840) was probably the only great composer of the past to show a constant interest in the guitar and, although he never played the instrument in public concerts, a number of testimonies to his ability as a guitarist have come down to us. For the Genovese maestro the guitar constituted the harmonic and accompanying instrument par excellence, so much so that in his music it occupied the role normally entrustedby composers of his era to the piano. Paganini wrote 140 compositions for solo guitar and almost all his works for strings (mainly for violin: sonatas, duets, trios, quartets and even someconcertos for violin and orchestra) were conceived withaccompaniment by guitar.
The selection of pieces is based on the idea of extracting from this disparate mass the works that best represent the spirit and originality of Paganini.
Today, to render this music accessible to any interpreter, it is necessary to supplement it with a polyphonic realisation of the parts: this edition adheres to the style of the Viennese publishers in the era of Mauro Giuliani, or, in other words, itwrites the high and low voices separately, grouping all the harmonic fillings on these two principal voices. With this type of notation, moreover, it is necessary to apply all the performance practices in use between the end of the 18th century andthe beginning of the 19th century.