Paganini/Piccinini: Capricci

Marina Piccinini Paganini 24 Caprices
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Artist: Marina Piccinini, Nicolò Paganini
Genre: Classical
Label: Avie

Can she be serious? Yes, she is. Marina Piccinini has arranged – and published – Paganini's 24 notoriously challenging solo violin caprices for solo flute. Her solutions are intelligent, resourceful and respectful. In performance a flautist doesn't have the same problems of intonation as a violinist, so there are places where Piccinini gains in both fluency and accuracy. But however creative she has been in ways of adapting the violin's double stops for the flute, there's really nothing meaningful to be done with the tremolo under a tune of No 6. And though Piccinini generally tries to keep the bar high on technical challenges, and finds some really elegant solutions, there's simply no sense of the danger and excitement the music triggers on the violin. url.ie/e8oo

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan is a music critic and Irish Times contributor