Paganini Violin Concerto No. 1 | Chloe Chua

If there were to be a real-life example of TwoSet Violin’s semi-mythical Ling Ling, it would be Niccolò Paganini, the OG superstar virtuoso and the first to make a following out of his stage persona instead of his repertoire. Paganini’s father had recognised his son’s natural talent early, and made him practise all day long, even withholding meals if he thought the results were not good enough.

NICCOLÒ PAGANINI (1782–1840)
Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 6 (1815)
I. Allegro maestoso 0:00
Cadenza: Émile Sauret 18:23
II. Adagio 24:10
III. Rondo. Allegro spiritoso 29:29
Applause 39:36

Chloe Chua, violin/Artist-In-Residence
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Mario Venzago, conductor

Recorded live at the Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore, 2 Sep 2023. Chloe is aged 16 at the time of the performance. ‪@ChloeChuaviolinist‬ Video & Audio: msm-productions (Singapore)
Photo: Chris P. Lim
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With such strict guidance and all that practice, Paganini rapidly exhausted all the virtuoso works in the violin repertoire. Finding them insufficiently virtuosic, he decided to start writing his own, incorporating new techniques and tricks he had come up with. Part of Paganini’s success was his own carefully curated image, and the mystery he shrouded himself with. He never let anyone hear him practise, always performed in all black with dishevelled hair and a gaunt appearance. He neither confirmed nor denied claims that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his skills, earning him his nickname, the Devil’s Violinist.

For all that he was, he lived up to his own hype, with seemingly nothing he could not do. Where others played harmonics, he played double-stopped harmonics; where others wrote octave double-stops, he wrote tenths. He invented a technique of plucking notes with the left hand and became known for the ricochet technique – where the bow would bounce quickly across the strings: all of which can be found in this first concerto that he wrote.

Taking a leaf out of Rossini’s book, Paganini’s concerto is written in a bel canto style and features all the theatricality of an opera. Its outer movements are grand, comical and lively, allowing the violin to display both its singing quality and virtuosic fireworks. The cadenza performed in this recording is the famous version by French violinist and composer Émile Sauret (1852-1920).

The middle movement is an expressive aria, accompanied by pizzicato strings imitating the sound of the guitar, another instrument that Paganini played. The finale brings back all the tricks in Paganini’s book, as though a parade of all the different characters.

In this recording, Paganini’s original instrumentation is used. This calls for 1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 1 bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 1 trombone, and strings. In the years following the original publication of the work, Paganini intermittently expanded his orchestration, writing additional parts for performance. These included a 2nd flute, contrabassoon, double the number of horns, new trombone 1 and trombone 2 parts, with the pre-existing trombone role becoming a (bass) trombone 3 part. Percussion parts were also added for timpani and banda turca (bass drum, crash cymbals, and suspended cymbal). His one and only surviving manuscript score does not contain these parts. (Natalie Ng, with additional notes by Leon Chia)