PAGANINI 24 Caprices+1 NING FENG
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CHANNEL CLASSICS CCS 43221 NING FENG VIOLIN PAGANINI 24 Caprices+1 NING FENG Ning Feng is recognized internationally as an artist Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schubertiade and of great lyricism, innate musicality and stunning La Jolla Music Society. Chamber music highlights virtuosity. Blessed with an impeccable technique include Ning Feng’s debut at the Concertgebouw and a silken tone, his palette of colors ranges from Amster dam in an all-Schubert program with intimate delicacy to a ferocious intensity. The Berlin Nicholas Angelich and Edgar Moreau, his return based Chinese violinist performs across the globe to the Wigmore Hall, the Schubertiade Festival with major orchestras and conductors, in recital for duo recitals with Igor Levit and chamber and chamber concerts. music concerts at the Barbican Centre in London. Recent successes for Ning Feng have included Ning Feng records exclusively for Channel a return to Budapest Festival Orchestra with Classics in the Netherlands. His recent disc with Iván Fischer in Budapest and on tour to China Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, the performing Dutilleux L’arbre des songes, tours first recording of these works by a Chinese with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and violinist, has been hailed by Gramophone as Jaap van Zweden to Europe, Asia and Australia, a “un like anyone else›s... it›s the illusion of a free tour to China with the Konzerthausorchester wheeling con versation projected from within that Berlin and Lawrence Foster, as well as successful held me captive”. Other previous discs include debuts with Los Angeles Philharmonic, Frankfurt Elgar and Finzi Violin Con certos with the Royal Radio Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by Carlos Orches tra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Miguel Prieto, Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and Philharmonic Orchestra with Simone Young, Hong Bruch Scottish Fantasy with the Deutsches Kong Phil harmonic Orchestra with Yu Long, and Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, ‘Apasionado’ with São Paulo Symphony Orchestra with Marin Alsop the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias in Brazil and on tour to the Far East. Furthermore, featuring works by Sarasate, Lalo, Ravel and Bizet/ he recently debuted with the Helsinki Philharmonic Waxman, two recordings with his Dragon Quartet Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales – which he founded in 2012 - and two CDs of and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, with whom he violin solo repertoire. His latest recording ‘Virtuo- Ning Feng (photo: Felix Broede) performed Henze Violin Concerto No. 2. He is sismo’ Paganini Violin Concerto No. 1 and Vieux- the Artist in Residence of the Shanghai Symphony temps Violin Concerto No. 4 with Orquesta Orchestras throughout the 2020/21 season. Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias and conductor Ning Feng regularly performs chamber music Rossen Milanov was very well received: “Feng and gives recitals at many of the major festivals, produces playing of real poetry, with a firm, burnished such as Kissinger Sommer, Heidelberg, Moritzburg, tone” (Gramophone, 2019) and the third movement 2 3 of his Paganini featured for a remarkable long time on International, Queen Elisabeth and Yehudi Menuhin NICCOLÒ PAGANINI – 24 CAPRICES + 1 an editorial Apple Music playlist. International Violin competitions, Ning Feng was Born in Chengdu, China, Ning Feng studied at First Prize winner of the 2005 Michael Hill Magic in the strings? nature of Paganini’s appearance and performance. the Sichuan Conservatory of Music with Weimin International Violin Competition (New Zealand), Music for string instruments is often felt to be And in almost all accounts of him, even the most Hu, the Hanns Eisler School of Music (Berlin) with and in 2006 won First Prize in the International soothing, enchanting and romantic. In Greek reticent and recent, there is one term that always Antje Weithaas and the Royal Academy of Music Violin Competition Premio Paganini in Genoa. mythology, Eurydice succumbed to the charms of crops up: the wizard. From the printed music one (London) with Hu Kun, where he was the first On the present recording Ning Feng plays a the singer Orpheus with his lyre, and in the Bible, cannot imagine how extremely difficult and almost student ever to be awarded 100% for his final 2017 Samuel Zygmuntowicz violin, and he plays on David played on the harp to drive away the evil impossible to play it really is, and it is clearly the recital. The recipient of prizes at the Hanover strings by Thomastik-Infeld, Vienna.. thoughts of King Saul. In many operas and plays domain of a select group of master violinists. But in which a lover serenades his beloved, he nearly there must have been more to Paganini than this, always accompanies himself on a guitar or mandolin. something which lurks behind the notes, a radiance, But string instruments do not only evoke romance a presence, the looks, an aura of mystery... and comfort, as the music of Béla Bartók and Iannis The thought that Europe as a whole was at Xenakis demonstrates, for they could turn the string Paganini’s feet has often been dismissed as mass quartet into an unimaginable ‘wild beast’. And this hysteria. Yet such giants as Schubert, Goethe, Rossini, aggressive approach is also familiar from pop music: Chopin, Schumann, Meyerbeer, Liszt and Berlioz Jimi Hendrix and the enormous tumult of his were among his admirers. Robert Schumann, who electric guitar, or groups like The Who, who actually was in doubt for years about whether to become smashed instruments to pieces. As far back as the a musician or a man of letters, finally opted for Middle Ages some string instruments were believed composition after hearing Paganini play in Frankfurt to harbour evil spirits. In the ‘Danse Macabre’ am Main in 1829. And Franz Liszt was so beside (Dance of Death), for example, the possessed himself after witnessing a concert in Paris that he fiddler sells his soul to the devil in exchange for went into hiding and was not to be found for weeks. superhuman musical skills. Frustrated by his own piano technique, after Paganini’s confronting recital he laboured frenetically Legends about Paganini to achieve pianistic perfection. After his weeks of Similar stories were told of the great nineteenth- ‘retreat’ the young Liszt’s piano playing was trans- century violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini. A Viennese formed: after Paganini’s example he had developed critic emphatically claimed to have seen how the entirely new technical possibilities. When Paganini devil, standing next to Paganini, wielded his bow on died in 1840, Liszt wrote such a superb necrology stage. It is just one of the many myths, legends, that it is among the finest pages ever written by a rumours and insinuations surrounding this violin composer about a colleague. Here Liszt describes phenomenon. They all tell us something about the his hero as the inimitable ‘king of art’, whose per- mysterious, enigmatic and almost superhuman formance created such a sensation, causing such 4 5 enchantment among the audience that it was not technical and virtuosic nature of the collection is edition also included Twelve Sonatas for violin and Caprices Caractéristiques pour le Violon opus 12 by inclined to accept a natural explanation. It was already captured in the title, for ‘capriccio’ (from the guitar (opus 2 and 3) and Six Guitar Quartets (opus Eduard Eliason (1808-1886), a German violinist who rumoured, for example, that the fourth string, on Latin caper = billy goat) suggests capers, tumbling, 4 and 5). In the period 1832-1840 Paginini appears studied with the French master Pierre Baillot and which Paganini brought forth the most alluring leaping and romping. A solemn, serene and intimate to have worked on a revised edition, the manuscript emigrated to England at an early age. There, in 1832, melodies, was made from the gut of his wife, whom mood was therefore hardly what the composer of which now included dedications of the individual under the conductor Ignaz Moscheles he gave, nota he was said to have strangled with his own hands. had in mind, so the tranquility of an Adagio or pieces to specific violinists and pianists, including bene, the English premiere of Beethoven’s Violin It is thanks to Franz Liszt’s admiration for the Sarabande, as in Bach’s violin sonatas and partitas, Henri Vieuxtemps, Franz Liszt, Sigismond Thalberg, Concerto, a year prior to the publication just men- Genoese violin phenomenon that we have his will be looked for in vain. Instead we are served Louis Spohr and Rodolphe Kreutzer. The final tion ed. Notably, Eduard Eliason included in this Paganini Études, the most famous of which is La with Paganini’s entire technical accomplishment: Capriccio was dedicated, slightly ironically, to himself: volume a piece which Paganini had dedicated to him, Campanella, after Paganini’s Violin Concerto no. 2. many rapid passages with double stops in thirds, 24: Nicolò Paganini, sepolto pur troppo (Niccolò the Caprice d’adieu (Farewell capriccio), which is a Schumann even wrote two series of Paganini sixths and tenths, harmonics (flageolet tones), Paganini, buried alas). little triptych full of technical challenges, but with a Études, and Johannes Brahms composed his pizzicatos (plucked tones), combined with bowed lighter touch than the other caprices. This remarkable notorious Variations on a theme of Paginini notes, glissandos (sliding tones), double trills and Adieu twenty-fifth Capriccio forms the conclusion of this (opus 35), nicknamed the ‘witch’s variations’. ‘solos’ for the G string alone. In executing all these The collection acquired another sequel, however, album, as if the legendary violin virtuoso from Genoa Brahms took the theme from the last of the virtuosic effects, Paganini appears to have profited when in 1833 the Mainz publisher B. Schott issued Six waves to the listener once more in a final farewell.