Paganiniana
Nicolo PAGANINI (1782-1840)
Caprices for solo violin, Op.1 No.24 (pub 1820) [5:42]
Josef SLAVÍK (1806-1833)
Caprice in D major (1824) [10:05]
Heinrich Wilhelm ERNST (1812-1865)
Etudes pour le violon a plusieurs parties 'Polyphonic studies': No.6 The Last Rose of Summer (pub 1865) [10:54]
Alfred SCHNITTKE (1934-1998)
A Paganini (1982) [12:34]
Fritz KREISLER (1875-1962)
Recitative and Scherzo-Caprice, Op.6 (pub 1911) [5:25]
Pavel ŠPORCL (b.1973)
Kde domov muj (Where is my home) [7:22]
Nathan MILSTEIN (1903-1992)
Paganiniana [9:44]
Jan KUBELÍK (1880-1940)
Cadenza for Paganini's Violin Concerto No.1 in D major, Op.6 [4:48]
Pavel Šporcl (violin)
rec. August-September 2020, Studio of the Academy of Performing Arts, Prague
HÄNSSLER CLASSICS HC20069 [66:50]
As distinctive as he is, and he could hardly be otherwise given his ponytail and blue violin, Pavel Šporcl has never allowed sartorial or other extraneous matters to subvert his music making. That said, this latest solo disc, which as a programme might have been played by someone like Ruggiero Ricci in years gone by (bar one or two pieces) strikes me as discographically dangerous. Some years ago he recorded a very similar looking solo album for Arco Diva (UP0010-2131). He may have been much younger and playing a conventional fiddle but there too was Milstein’s Paganininia, Kreisler’s Recitative and Scherzo-Caprice, Schnittke’s A Paganini and Ernst’s The Last Rose of Summer to which he added Bach’s Chaconne and a popular work of Sylvia Bodorová’s, Dža more.
The title of that earlier album was a Paganini and the disc under review is Paganiniana so as the Czech disc is still available be sure you get the right label. Otherwise, other than a similar tempo for the Schnittke – he is actually somewhat faster in this new Hänssler disc, recorded in the autumn of 2020 - he tends to be slightly less impulsive in this most recent traversal, though the playing itself is highly accomplished throughout. He happens to be one of those rare players who marries virtuoso accomplishments with imagination, and that’s necessary in a 67-minute programme for solo violin.
He has recorded quite a lot of Paganini, though not always the most obvious pieces, but here he starts with the 24th Caprice, following it with a previously unrecorded Caprice in D major by his short-lived compatriot Josef Slavík, written when he was a precociously gifted student in 1824. It opens with an expressive Adagio and encodes some eventful answering phraseology and a succession of tough double-stops. Perhaps it’s too repetitious for its good but it’s marvellously played by Šporcl. He is less daredevil than Ricci in the Ernst finger-buster (review) but less needlessly satiric than Ilya Gringolts in his Hyperion disc (review) and more fluent technically than Sherban Lupu in his Ernst cycle on Toccata (review).
Schnittke’s A Paganini imagines the great violinist meeting the Devil with whom he struggles. Quotations from the caprices are heard as is the mastery he gains as a result of his meeting, a familiar trope from Tartini’s dream and the lonesome meeting at the crossroads of blues guitarist Robert Johnson and the Devil. Schnittke is the only non-violinist in the programme of composers.
Šporcl’s approach to Milstein’s Paganiniana has slowed by well over a minute, but neither of his recordings is as sumptuously fleet as Milstein’s own, not least the later DG reading, and the Czech player clearly feels that the Kreisler should be rather more expansive now than in his earlier reading. His own Kde domov muj (Where is my home), is a very effective and stirring series of variations on František Skroup’s theme, which became the Czechoslovak National Anthem on its independence. Finally, there is what’s termed a bonus track, namely the cadenza written by an earlier hero of the Czech violin school, Jan Kubelík, for Paganini’s First Violin Concerto. It’s not as overtly virtuosic as the familiar Sauret cadenza but, as Šporcl is quoted as saying in the booklet, it’s a lot more melodic.
There’s a finely judged recording in the Studio of the Academy of Performing Arts, Prague and attractive notes. There’s no Bach in this disc to add ‘gravity’, rather a succession of caprices, etudes, and variations to stimulate and enjoy.
Jonathan Woolf
