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Salvatore Accardo Accardo Plays Paganini – The Complete Recordings Blu-Ray/CD

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Noted for his exquisite, beautiful playing and a technical wizardry carried off with disarming nonchalance, Accardo is most readily associated with Paganini – though technical wizardry for its own sake holds little fascination for him: "Of course for young violinists it is always a challenge to be able to play the 24 Caprices, but as I got older I understood that what was important in his music was its almost operatic qualities."

All the cadenzas in Accardo's legendary Paganini cycle for Deutsche Grammophon are his his own except in the case of No. 1 for which he uses that by Sauret. As is well-known, the composer never set down his own, and at rehearsals would always lower his violin with the words “Et cetera, messieurs.” Accardo's instrument is a Stradivarius dating from 1717.

“One can only heap the by now customary superlatives on Accardo, who appears, quite simply, to have no problems with even the most extreme passages in these scores. In fact, though Paganini himself might not have taken it as a compliment, one tends to forget about technique and listen to each piece purely as music, the point somehow being underlined by Dutoit's alert accompaniments”  GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE