If, usually, we associate Paganini to his twenty-four Caprices and the devilish virtuosity they demand of the violinist, you will see him here in a completely new light: the works for violin and guitar, much closer to Haydn and Mozart than to the devil’s hand that guided them for the Caprices. Written at the very beginning of the 19th century for some, and in the 1830s for the ones of the collections known as Centone di sonate, these works give prominence both to the violin and the guitar—we will remind you here that Paganini was also a phenomenal guitarist. As for the term “Centone”, it evokes a collection of pieces composed of elements reused from one or many other works; some kind of patchwork, in a way, and indeed the composer integrated there a bit of everything that was in fashion at the time, from the waltz to the polonaise, the pastoral to the march—we don’t necessarily know from whom or from where he took it, or if he just used the term to characterize the medley aspect of the thing. Fabio Biondi on violin and Giangiacomo Pinardi on Romantic guitar (an instrument from 1825) have a field day, and prove us that Paganini could be something other than a simple dispenser of virtuosity. © SM/Qobuz