Paganini Caprice 16

Happy Holidays! I managed to avoid the Holiday shopping by purchasing most of the presents through Internet. It is almost impossible to find a parking space these days at the shopping malls. Anyway, we had very good lessons this past weekend. My son finally started his first Paganini Caprice. It is No. 16. His assignment was to work on the first three lines very slowly. Thankfully, his intonation was pretty good, so they started to work on phrasing and attacking of the bow, etc. Especially, when you play this, you need to watch the dynamics very carefully. Paganini put fortes in particular notes and you need to really bring out those and you will hear a melody. Of course, my son is not allowed to play this piece in tempo yet. It require a slow, precise practice before he can even attempt to do so. Also, in some bars, you need to stretch your fingers very wide which is really one of the challenges in playing Paganini. His teacher told him to shake and loose his hands whenever his fingers get tired or sore. It is not a good idea to push yourself too far in these passages when practicing. This will lead you to an injury. By next month, he is required to memorize the entire piece with perfect intonation and good sound. My son is getting back on track so to speak. He started to focus more and pay attention to his intonation. We'll see how this will go. His teacher's recommended recordings are by
Midori, Shlomo Mintz, James Ehnes. I also have a DVD of Alexander Markov performing entire 24 caprices which is very intense and iteresting. He supposedly learned all 24 caprices in one summer. That is incredible!