Paganini's Daemon - A Most Enduring Legend - Naxos Deutschland

The film on this DVD presents Paganini's music, filmed and edited in the style developed by Christopher Nupen and his colleagues for their prize winning DVDs about Sibelius, Schubert and Tchaikovsky and combines it with extracts from Paganini's letters and quotations from both his admirers and his many detractors.

While being hailed at the greatest performing musician of his time, Paganini was denounced again and again by knowledgeable critics as a charlatan in league with the devil and an avaricious man with scant respect for those who responded so enthusiastically to his unforgettable gift - and contributed so readily to his vast personal fortune.

In time this provoked envy and resentment and, finally, a pitiable isolation. By the time of his death, at the age of 57, his unbending quest for gold and for glory had robbed him slowly of almost everything else.

The story is one of the most extraordinary and fascinating in our musical history.