Sei giorni di una tournée europea di Niccolò Paganini: Kassel - Göttingen - Kassel, 25-30 maggio 1830.

Abstract

At the end of his first European tour, which lasted about one year and a half and during which Paganini performed in 49 German and Polish cities, the violinist held two concerts in Kassel (25 and 30 May 1830) and one in Göttingen (28 May 1830). Louis Spohr, who had known the violinist in Venice in 1816 and was eager to listen to him again, was crucial in organizing the two concerts in Kassel. Spohr's wish was fulfilled only one year after Paganini begun his German tour, because the intense activity forced the violinist to take an artistic journey that brought him away from Kassel and Göttingen. In the latter city the violinist played thanks to the help of Karl Himly, an ophthalmologist who had been consulted by Paganini on Spohr's advice.
New knowledge about these concerts cast a light on the organization of musical tours during the beginning of the nineteenth century and provide new details, such as the chamber music performances in Frankfurt am Main with his friends Wilhelm Speyer and Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee, about one of the most interesting phases of his artistic life. These new elements help to reconstruct the concert tour of the violinist with the constant shifts between different towns which made difficult for him to write new compositions. The testimony of those who met and listened Paganini is also reported: Wilhelm Speyer wrote that he had never heard such a phenomenon, Richard Lepsius admitted that it is impossible to describe what he had heard and Wilhelm Grimm pointed to his playing as extravagant but «unbelievably touching and moving». The memoirs of Emil Ludwig Grimm also enable to better know the events at the time when Paganini sat for the portrait from which two famous engravings were drawn, one depicting the head and shoulders of the violinist, the other a complete bust. The appendix includes an updated chronological list of the cities where Paganini gave concerts between January 1829 and July 1830, with a map showing the path followed in his journey.