Moments of Music

I still remember the first time I saw this recording - it was on the Cassette display rack in Cranbrook Public Library in Kent in the early 1980s.  I was about 13 and had started learning the violin at school and so was keen to listen to classical music featuring the instrument.  I hadn't heard of the 19th Century Italian virtuoso violinist  Niccolò Paganini  (1782-1840) before but wanted to listen to this new work... Over the past thirty years I have come to love this concerto  - to my mind it is Paganini's most tuneful, most mature and most sophisticated work for violin and orchestra. Paganini was something of a mystery to his audiences, a showman who kept his amazing playing technique (and written solo parts) a secret - to the extent that at performances he would only give orchestra members their printed music parts at the last possible moment and would gather them up again as soon as the concert was ended.  There were no printed, published scores or...

When I was little I loved looking through my parents' collection of vinyl LPs. The feeling of selecting an album from the red wire storage rack,  studying the picture and writing on the front, turning the sleeve over to read the details on the reverse.  And finally removing the black disc from it's paper sleeve, being sure to hold it delicately at the edges by my fingertips (as my dad was at pains to instruct me) while gently placing it on the turntable... Almost all the LPs in the collection were of either classical music or Christian music.   The very first album I can remember from this was a recording of Antonio Vivaldi's four concertos for violin and strings,  known as 'The Four Seasons'. The concertos were first published in 1725 as part of a set of twelve concerti, Vivaldi's Opus 8, entitled Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention).  The four concertos were written to accompany four sonn...