This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: Some people are natural mountain climbers who are always challenging themselves. Always looking upward. They relish scaling the highest heights, and as they challenge themselves they inspire and confound others at the same time.
Those they baffle find themselves shaken by the struggle to understand, to meet the standard of the master climber. Those they enthuse, they stir deeply. It is those rare enthusiasts who become masters themselves.
In classical music, certainly one of the most notable and masterful climbers is Italian legend Niccolò Paganini, one of the 19th century’s most noted violin virtuosos. Many believe Paganini became a composer largely because he desired more challenging works than he could find.
The results of this nimble mind and fingers are breathtakingly complex and challenging concertos and symphonies that are best suited for those artful cliffhangers who defy gravity. Those who scale the unscalable (forgive me).
Such a man is Augustin Hadelich, a German violinist born in Italy with fiery fast yet fervent fingers, who will make his St. Louis debut this weekend.
Hadelich, who won a gold medal in the 2006 International Violin Competition in Indianapolis, will perform Paganini’s Violin Concerto No 1 in D minor as well as Cadenzas he himself composed, with the St. Louis Symphony at Powell Hall.
Still, Hadelich said it is not Paganini’s challenging to his soloists’ dexterity, rather it is his passion that he relishes.
“It is very lyrical,” he said, acknowledging that he was drawn to the “emotion of the piece.”
There are other violinists who do not like Paganini as well as he does, Hadelich said. “It is incredibly uncomfortable to play,” he said.
At the same time, Hadelich said he does understand the draw audiences have to the piece. But for him, the passion plays an important part in the intricacy of the music.
This is not about just managing to hit the notes and keep up with the required agility. Rather, he said, the skill is bringing forth the richness of the music.
“I think a lot of people think of this as a show piece,” he said. “And it is. It has all of the fireworks that make this very, very technically hard to play.”
This status as one of the most challenging pieces to play is what brings audiences. But that is not necessarily what brings them to their feet.
For that, Hadelich attributes something more. “It has the emotion of an Italian opera — every line is out of an Italian opera,” he said. And yet this is a work that ensnares the audience’s fantasy.
“People are being moved by this,” he said. “The Paganini has mysterious textures, particularly in the second movement, it is very, very passionate, very, very dramatic.”
These are the sorts of pieces he enjoys. “I do love playing so hard,” he said. “There is a huge payoff even if it is a lot of work.”
The concert will also feature French composer Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique op. 14, yet another example of grand scale (forgive me, again), high drama.
Considered an opera without music, the piece offers as much high drama and emotive moments as any drama could.
And complementing these pieces is another of Paganini’s contemporaries and compatriots, Giachino Rossini, who was known as the Italian Mozart for his operas. The symphony will perform Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri Overture.
All three composers valued and respected each other, according to a wide range of accounts. From all three composers, there was a mutual respect, as well as a common interest in the complex and the emotive.
And this weekend they will share the drama with an up and coming master, one who relishes the challenge.
“I have heard St. Louis perform, and I know some of the musicians,” Hadelich said. “I have known I was going to play a concert in St. Louis for two years, so I am excited to make this debut.”