Why on earth arrange music written specifically to explore the capabilities of a single violin for string quartet? Partly, of course, for the sheer fun of the challenge of it. Partly to make explicit the implicit harmonies and counterpoints contained within the writing. And partly, perhaps, to aid the listener to see the wood despite the trees. By spreading the virtuosity around his four players William Zinn, well known for a host of brilliant arrangements (as well as for his original compositions), reduces the risk of a performance being a solo high-wire act. It’s no longer about a single performer showing off. It’s about the notes and the music that lies between them. Zinn, it happens, is also a distinguished string player himself, having held posts in the orchestras of Baltimore, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis. Without betraying Paganini in the least, the impression his arrangement gives is not so much a matter of arrangement but of discovery. He finds a convincing string quartet from within the original. On the surface he makes astute changes of register, adds harmonies and counterpoints, offers articulations that vary from the original, gives each instrument its fair share of the limelight. But he goes much further, illuminating Paganini’s cultural context by, for instance, finding in the third Caprice a world not too far from that of a late Beethoven quartet, or in the main body of Caprice No 18 summoning a spirit that seems positively Haydn-like. His counterpoints can be tough or simple, his harmonies dense or light, his additions sparing or extravagant, but everything he does, however far it veers from what Paganini wrote, seems perfectly appropriate both for the spirit of the original and for its exciting new idiom.
