Pavel Steidl, guitar
Guitar Sonata No. 21 in A Major composed circa 1813
Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840)

Recorded during the European Guitar Quartet’s concert in Kaufmann Concert Hall on November 9, 2019. Pavel Steidl gave the following introduction to this piece:

At the pre-concert talk, we were discussing two different musical performance styles: the “correct” style, and the style which in the 19th century was called the “beautiful” style. I was supposed to play my own original piece at this point in the program, but our discussion of these contrasting styles inspired me to play a piece by Niccolò Paganini instead. Paganini is best known as a marvelous violin player, but his hidden treasure was the guitar. We are still discovering how big of an influence the guitar was on Paganini’s violin playing, and the violin on his guitar skills. He played both at about the same level. I’d like to play for you one sonata which he wrote for the guitar—sonata here doesn’t refer to a sonata in the formal sense, but Paganini used the word as a derivation of the Italian word “suonare,” as in, “to play an instrument.”