Paganini at the Piano

In the years between 1902 and 1914 some of the world’s greatest pianists published a series of works that explored the lyricism and virtuosity of Paganini’s Caprices. Busoni was the greatest figure among them, but he considered Mark Hambourg to be the greatest pianistic talent of his generation. Both Michael Zadora and Ignaz Friedman carried out inventive free transcriptions while years later the Croatian Boris Papandopulo infused the pungent flavours of mid-20th-century idioms into the genre.