Customer Reviews

Paganini: 24 Capricci

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
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For some reason I've always been in love with these works. My favorite recordings with Rabin, Markov, Ricci, and Mintz have been on frequent rotation, receiving countless plays over the years (not to mention versions like Perleman which I can't stand), but this new recording of Thomas Zehetmair literally blew my mind. It shifted paradigms, I'm a new man since hearing them... First, it's an incredibly immediate recording. Second, the phenomenal level of dedication and commitment to bring the utmost from the music, I've almost never experienced anything like it before -- it makes the violin sound like an instrument with which I've never previously made acquaintance. For the past few years, Christian Tetzlaff has been my favorite violinist, but this disc, oh my G-d, this disc -- this fantastic Desert Island disc -- I can't imagine living happily without it. If you've heard his outstanding Ysaye, prepare yourself, it's that kind of musicality turned up to 11.

Perhaps no other Paganini recording displays so much verve and flair - wonderful CD with dazzling playing - great pizzazz!

"Paradigm shifting" (as D. Lopez puts it) is an excellent way of describing this recording. I've been listening the same recordings of the Caprices for ten years (Ricci, Accardo, Rabin, etc), and my mind is totally blown.

Not buying this (it's also available on iTunes) is, in my opinion, a huge mistake. And anyone who continues to shower Rabin's recording with dithyrambic praise after listening to Zehetmair's is, in my honest opinion, deaf.

(Zehetmair does the original (ricochet) bowing, I think, in the fifth caprice. It's insane. But so is everything else...)