Recording Bartolomeo Campagnoli's 41 Caprices for Solo Viola.
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Caprice no. 37
Caprice number 37 is about as pedantic as it gets for this book. We make our way through the circle of fifths with the same pattern, which explores eighths, sixteenths, and triplet eighths. Campagnoli even repeats C# as the key of D-flat when we make the transition to flat keys (mm. 16-20), - an interesting moment for the ear.
My favorite section was the arpeggios (bariolage) section at the end. This, at least, seemed to have some direction and interest in its chord development. Overall, it's an incredibly boring caprice, but it does get the job done on the technical side. Campagnoli gives lots of fingering, which is unusual for him. He wants the player to many different positions and keys, but always with the same finger/bow pattern. This proves to be quite challenging when you have to nail 5th position out of nowhere, like in measures 11 and 25.
I'll give him this: it's still better than playing the standard etude!
Caprice number 40 was difficult to learn but ultimately fun and rewarding. As musically simple as it is, I think it's one of the flashiest pieces in the book. (Case in point: my recording engineer, Stuart Breczkinsi, decided this one should be the background piece for the introductory video to my project.) The key of B Major makes the notes bright and cheerful on the viola. And the string crossing sections almost give it a fiddling/bluegrass feel (mm.27-37) . Of course, that style emerged from Baroque violin technique. Don't be fooled by the eighth notes: this one should fly off your fingers (and bow) as the Vivace assai marking requests. As with any fast piece, practice working up your speed in very short bursts, at times only a measure. Always remember to land on the next downbeat so you can thread your section practice together into longer fragments.
Caprice no. 13 at a glance appears to be a study in the octave, and my first instinct was to play the octaves with the modern approach of 1st and 4th finger (ie: lots of shifting). With further study, I realized this was the wrong approach: the work also explores arpeggios, tenths, and other intervals. Furthermore, if Campagnoli wants a fingering that takes you out of first position, he will usually indicate it. Therefore, most of this caprice stays in first position. Ironically, staying in first position makes intonation more difficult. This is because often, you jump from the C string to the D string, or the G to the A, and the left hand has to adjust across the fingerboard. So, in order to play this successfully, your left arm will have to swivel slightly, back and forth to guide the LH adjustment. You can see how this works for me in the video.
Background Two years ago, I assigned one of Bartolomeo Campagnoli's 41 Caprices for Viola, Op. 22 to a student of mine. At our lesson the following week, she told me she had searched for a recording online but couldn't find one. Listening to assigned pieces is a regular exercise for her (as for many of my students), and the fact that she couldn't find a recording hindered her progress that week. I went home that evening and began searching online for recordings of the caprices, and found they were sadly lacking. Campagnoli's Caprices for Viola are as difficult and musical as Paganini's 24 Caprices for Violin, yet as scarce as Paganini's are popular in representation. That's when I realized someone needed to change that. In fact, I could change it. I thought up a far-fetched dream to record all forty-one caprices. After practicing some of my favorite caprices and realizing their true difficulty, I got discouraged and put the thought away for a w...
