The New Paganini Project Niklas Liepe

• Niccolò Paganini (1782 - 1840): 24 Caprices for Violin, Op. 1:
• 1 No. 1 in E Major 02:03
• 2 No. 2 in B Minor 05:28
• 3 No. 3 in E Minor 04:22
• 4 No. 4 in C Minor, "Transformation concertante" 07:20
• 5 No. 5 in A Minor 03:20
• 6 No. 6 in G Minor, "Trance" 05:12
• 7 No. 7 in A Minor 03:57
• 8 No. 8 in E-Flat Major 03:57
• 9 No. 9 in E Major, "La chasse" 03:24
• 10 No. 10 in G Minor, "Danse macabre" 04:23
• 11 No. 11 in C Major 04:09
• 12 No. 12 in A-Flat Major 03:21
• 13 No. 13 in B-Flat Major 02:35
• 14 No. 14 in E-Flat Major 02:01
• 15 No. 15 in E Minor 03:46
• 16 No. 16 in G Minor 04:10
• 17 No. 17 in E-Flat Major 03:32
• 18 No. 18 in C Major 04:08
• 19 No. 19 in E-Flat Major 04:58
• 20 No. 20 in D Major 02:59
• 21 No. 21 in A Major 02:44
• 22 No. 22 in F Major 02:08
• 23 No. 23 in E-Flat Major 03:33
• 24 No. 24 in A Minor 08:46
• Fazil Say (1970 - ):
• 25 Paganini-Jazz for Piano (Arr. for Jazz Quartet) 08:10
• Total Runtime 01:44:26

Info for The New Paganini Project

The 24 Caprices for solo Violin by Niccolò Paganini are a challenge for every violinist. They request virtuosity at the highest level and they are full of musical color and variety.

“I often bevailed that the caprices are not as very-well established in the concert life as they should, in my opinion”, says violinist Niklas Liepe. In order to change this, he started the “New Paganini Project”. Together with the German Radio Philharmonic Orchester Saarbrücken/Kaiserslautern under the baton of Gregor Bühl, he recorded the CD “The New Paganini Project” (SONY Classical, German release: 9 March 2018).

The Idea: The 24 Caprices by Niccolò Paganini can be re-experienced in a totally new sound image. Partly, there are arrangements of the caprices for violin and piano by already deceased composers such as Robert Schumann and Fritz Kreisler. Prof. N. Tarkmann, who already arranged music for Jonas Kaufmann and Anna Netrebko, will arrange these versions for the new instrumentation violin and orchestra. Additionally, contemporary composers such ans Fazil Say and Andrea Csollány created completely new arrangements for the solo caprices.

The special challenge for the composers is to ensure that the orchestra is not only a petty sound carpet but to create a new, edgy and top-class compendium on the basis of Paganini’s caprices. The famous original artistically-compositionally charges the new works and accords the orchestra a technically, compositionally and artistically demanding task. Meanwhile, the virtousity of the violin must not be impaired.

The “Caprices are much more than just ‘technical studies’, each of them is a little jewel for every violinist to date”, says the young violinist. He made it his business too give these jewels a new cutting.

Niklas Liepe, violin
Deutsche Radio Philharmonie
Gregor Bühl, conductor

Niklas Liepe
born in 2. March 1990 in Göttingen, has been described by the press from an early age as a „soloist in a class of his own who seems to meld with his violin and captivates the audience with breath-takingly brisk, spirited but also dreamy and romantic passages“ and whose „purity and clarity of his playing, ‚sweetness‘ of the violin, and its soft and emotive tones have an enchanting effect“.

After studying at the Musical College of Hanover (Prof. Krzystof Wegrzyn) and Cologne (Prof. Zakhar Bron), the young violinist is currently furthering his studies with Prof. Ana Chumachenco and Prof. Mihaela Martin as part of the program „Master of Music in International Violin Solo Performance“ at the Kronberg Academy. He has also taken part in master classes throughout Europe and the US, with esteemed artists such as Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet and Andras Schiff, who can attest to a shining future for the young violinist.

As a chamber musician he performed with artists such as Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Fazil Say, Andras Schiff, Antoine Tamestit, John Holloway, Jérôme Pernoo, Mischa Maisky, Paul Meyer, Markus Becker and Nils Mönkemeyer.

Niklas has won many prizes in national and international com- petitions: he was awarded a „Next Generation“ prize from the North German Radio (Norddeutsches Rundfunk), and was also a prize-winner at the „Braunschweig Classix Festival“, the Gdansk Festival Week, the Kocian Violin Competitionin the Czech Republic, the international Da-Ponte Chamber Music Competition, twice the international Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Poland and in 2014 the international New Talent Competition Bratislava of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) .He is also a scholarship recipient of the Oscar and Vera Ritte Foundation Hamburg, the Jürgen-Ponto Foundation Frankfurt am Main and the Ann-Kathrin Linsenhoff Foundation.

Niklas is regularly invited to festivals such as the Dresdner Musikfest- spiele, Schwetzinger Sommer, Festival „les vacances de Monsieur Haydn“ in France, the Verbier Festival and the Sochi Winter Inter- national Arts Festival in Russia. From a very young age, Niklas has also performed as a chamber musician and as a soloist with varying orchestras, including the Braunschweig State Orchestra, the Voigt- land Philharmonic, the Brandenburg City State Orchestra Frankfurt/ Oder, the State Orchestra of Rhineland Palatinate, the Opera and Museums Orchestra Frankfurt, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orche- stra Bratislava and the Pisendel Orchestra as part of the Dresden Music Festival, with conductors such as Hartmut Haenchen, Nicolas Pasquet, John Holloway and Heribert Beisel. He has performed in prestigious venues like the Philharmonie Cologne, Philharmonie Essen, Alte Oper Frankfurt and Beethovenhouse in Bonn. wNumerous radio segments with Niklas and television documentari- es about internationally prominent violin talents (2007 broadcast on WDR, ARTE, BR television) have been produced. In April 2014, a CD with the works of Albeniz, Turina and Ginastera will be published in collaboration with SWR at the Hänssler-Classic.

Booklet for The New Paganini Project