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Nic­colò Paganini’s 24 Caprices for solo vio­lin, com­pleted around 1817, are con­sid­ered among the most dif­fi­cult things for a vio­lin­ist to mas­ter, espe­cially the strik­ing final caprice, in A minor. Apart from its sta­tus as the ne plus ultra show­piece to demon­strate a violinist’s vir­tu­os­ity, it’s a thump­ing good tune, extend­ed into vari­a­tions. Those vari­a­tions have fas­ci­nated lat­er com­posers, and have gen­er­ated a huge num­ber of rework­ings, and fresh vari­a­tions of their own device. Wikipedia lists works by 29 com­posers based on the last caprice.

When Brahms pro­duced his Vari­a­tions for Piano on a Theme from Pagani­ni, Op.35, both Liszt and Schu­mann had already worked on vir­tu­oso piano inter­pre­ta­tions of Paganini’s 24th. Brahms’ piece is clos­er to Schumann’s. He divides the the work into into two seg­ments, Book I and Book II, each begin­ning with the theme, and run­ning through vari­a­tions to a bravu­ra cli­max. This makes the piece sound odd­ly repet­i­tive, since both sets are very sim­i­lar in orga­ni­za­tion and style. Brahms, appar­ently, was exper­i­ment­ing with play­ing tech­nique, and I’m told the piece is as dif­fi­cult for a pianist as the orig­i­nal is for a vio­lin­ist. But as a non-play­er, I’m prob­a­bly miss­ing most of its tech­ni­cal sig­nif­i­cance. I can see how­ever, that he squeezes every pos­si­ble emo­tion that you can out of the lit­tle melody, remind­ing you that few tunes have any fixed, inate emo­tional con­tent. I have per­for­mances by Wal­ter Rosen and Charles Klein. I play the Klein one quite often.

Karol Szymanowski’s Three caprices about Pagani­ni themes for vio­lin and piano was com­posed in 1918, rough­ly at the time of his love affair with the 15-year-old Russ­ian poet Boris Kochno, and the writ­ing of his erot­ic nov­el Efe­bos. The three caprices (#20, 21 and 24), in Szymanowski’s hands, are sweet­er than Paganini’s orig­i­nals… drip­ping with roman­tic feel­ing. The A minor caprice takes Paganini’s solo vio­lin and gives it a plucky piano accom­pa­ni­ment that bal­ances it well. The pizzi­cato pas­sage has par­tic­u­larly nice inter­play between the two instruments.

Sergei Rachmaninov’s Rhap­sody on a Theme of Pagani­ni in A Minor, Op.43 [Рапсодия на тему ПаганиниРапсодия на тему Паганини] is prob­a­bly more often played than the Paganini’s orig­i­nal piece. It’s a peren­nial “B‑side” item, usu­ally thrown in with one of Rachmaninov’s piano con­cer­tos. Often, it’s paired with Ernst Dohnanyi’s Vari­a­tions on a Nurs­ery Theme, and that’s how I first heard it. Julius Katchen’s 1954 per­for­mance on Dec­ca / Lon­don, which I own on the orig­i­nal “heavy” vinyl that weighs and feels like an old lac­quer record­ing, is one such. I have oth­er oth­er per­for­mances: one in a box set of the con­cer­tos by Rafael Oroz­co, one by Margrit Weber, and a sparkling one by Van Cliburn, but Katchen’s remains my favourite. Rachmaninov’s treat­ment of the caprice is in stan­dard vari­a­tion form, but he man­ages to make it feel like a piano con­certo, with sweep­ing orches­tral pas­sages, and dreamy inter­play between soloist and orches­tra. It was first per­formed in Bal­ti­more, in 1934, with Rach­mani­nov at the key­board. The heart of the piece is the love­ly, slow eigh­teenth vari­a­tion, half-way through, which is a strik­ing “upside down” ver­sion of the theme in D‑flat. This heart-throb­bing melody was ripped off for pop­u­lar songs, and con­stantly turned up in pas­sion­ate romance movies from the 30s to the 50s. Rach­mani­nov is said to have quipped: “This one is for my Agent.” It may be a bit much for today’s taste. But there are plen­ty of oth­er enter­tain­ing, stick-in-your-mem­o­ry pas­sages in the work. I’ve always liked the abrupt, anti-cli­mac­tic end­ing, com­ing after a dra­matic buildup.

The under-rat­ed Pol­ish com­poser Witold Lutosławs­ki pro­duced yet anoth­er solo piano take on the 24th caprice. Lutosławs­ki lived a rather hard life. A year after he was born, in 1913, his fam­ily fled to Rus­sia to help orga­nize Pol­ish resis­tance to the Ger­man occu­pa­tion, only to be trapped there by the Bol­she­vik rev­o­lu­tion. At the age of five, his father and broth­er were exe­cuted by the Com­mu­nists ― by a fir­ing squad, a few days before their sched­uled “tri­al”. Return­ing to Poland short­ly after, he stud­ied math­e­mat­ics and music. He was serv­ing in the Pol­ish armed forces as a radio tech­ni­cian when the Com­mu­nists and Nazis invad­ed and divid­ed Poland. He was cap­tured by Ger­man sol­diers, but he escaped while being marched to prison camp, and walked 400 km back to War­saw. At the same time, his sur­viv­ing broth­er was cap­tured by the Rus­sians, and ulti­mately died in the Gulag. He spent the Nazi occu­pa­tion of War­saw com­pos­ing and play­ing Resis­tance songs in the under­ground cafés that sprout­ed up when the Nazis banned the play­ing of Pol­ish music. It was here that he com­posed the Vari­a­tions on a Theme of Pagani­ni. It was one of only a hand­ful of his hun­dreds of ear­ly com­po­si­tions that sur­vive being incin­er­ated dur­ing the War­saw Upris­ing. After the War, he strug­gled for decades with Com­mu­nist cen­sor­ship. Many of his best works were sup­pressed, and were only played out­side of Poland. But he con­tin­ued to build an inter­na­tional rep­u­ta­tion from sheer force of cre­ativ­ity and orig­i­nal­ity. Towards the end of his life, he became close­ly relat­ed with Sol­i­dar­ity, and lived to see Poland’s lib­er­a­tion. Con­sid­er­ing the con­di­tions under which it was com­posed, it’s not sur­pris­ing that the Vari­a­tions are far from Rachmaninov’s inter­pre­ta­tion. Actu­ally, they sound as if some­one had been sched­uled to play the Rach­mani­nov rhap­sody, assas­si­nated the con­duc­tor and all the orches­tra, then pro­ceeded to play a dement­ed, fre­netic par­ody of it, solo, under the influ­ence of phenyl­cy­clo­hexylpiperi­dine. In 1977, Lutosławs­ki revised and expand­ed the com­po­si­tion into a piano con­certo, which I haven’t heard.