Duration: 6 minutes

Description: Henryk Wieniawski (1835–1880) composed his Capriccio-Valse, Op. 7 as a young virtuoso, traditionally dated to 1852, when the seventeen-year-old violinist was touring Russia with his pianist brother Józef, although the work’s precise chronology is somewhat complicated. The surviving autograph is dated July 20, 1854 in Munich, while evidence indicates that an earlier version was already in existence before then. One of Wieniawski’s youthful pièces de salon, the work combines the elegance and lilting rhythms of the waltz with the brilliant technical display expected of a nineteenth-century touring virtuoso, requiring harmonics, rapid scales and passagework, agile bowing, and delicately articulated figurations while retaining the graceful cantabile melody characteristic of Wieniawski’s more lyrical writing. It was conceived as a vehicle through which the composer could display his extraordinary violin technique before the European audiences that had already recognized him as a prodigy. Today, Capriccio-Valse, Op. 7 is less frequently encountered than Wieniawski’s two violin concertos, Légende, Op. 17, or Scherzo-Tarantelle, Op. 16, but it remains in the violin literature as an attractive example of his early Romantic salon style and has appeared in numerous later performing editions, including this one by Leopold Auer. Its combination of melodic charm and brilliant violin technique also offers an illuminating glimpse of the youthful virtuoso-composer whose more mature works would secure a permanent place in the violin repertoire. Reprint edition.

• M286991 / 36-M286991 CAPRICCIO-VALSE OP 7 SOLO/P $7.95Buy Now