Three Capriccios by Niccolò Paganini for Violin Solo (nr 18, 14 and 5) arranged for Piano Solo

Papapandopulo’s transcriptions of the 24 Caprices for violin by Niccolo Paganini are without doubt a document of his brilliant mastery of the piano, as well as miniature mirrors of typical Papandopulo charm and wit. The Croatian composer kept faithfully to the musical structure of the original notation, adding nothing and in no wise abbreviating it, and yet his arrangements cannot be characterised as paraphrases. Paganini composed his caprices in the form of the etude, separately, in three phases between 1802 and 1817. Because of the extraordinary high technical and performing demands, at the time they were published in 1820 they were held not to be performable, and Paganini himself, one of the greatest violinists and composers of the first half of the 19th century, was the only one to perform them. Boris Papandopulo selected three of the Paganini Caprices (I – Caprice 18; II – Caprice 14 and III – Caprice 5), transcribing them in 1921 for piano solo for the solo performance of famed Russian pianist Nikolai Petrov. The celebrated Russian artist gave several concerts in Croatia, but in the end the first performance of the miniature cycle of Papandopulo was given by the Croatian pianist Vladimir Krpan on July 1989 at the Osor Musical Evenings.