What would we give to have heard Paganini playing, even in a recording? He apparently mesmerised his audiences; but how? Just by incredible technique? His collective works suggest that it was not all technique.

I wonder this when listening to a good new recording (Naxos, of course) by Philippe Quint in which he plays an hour of Paganini-Kreisler arrangements with piano (not, alas, including the rather interesting first movement of Paganini's first concerto in its Kreisler re-write, with orchestra). I do not like Paganini's caprices with a plonking piano "accompaniment" (nor do I like a piano added to Bach's unaccompanied sonatas and partitas à la Schumann). The Paganini caprices just do not need a piano filling in harmonies in the background. Quint plays three of the caprices, and I wish he had played them solo.

I have never before heard, nor owned a recording of, Paganini's Variations on "Non più mesta" from Rossini's La Cenerentola (twelve and a half minutes). Which is where I would have liked to be able to compare Paganini to Quint, and others. These variations (like the "di tanti palpiti" variations also on this CD), contain many passages where the violin plays melodies in double-stopped harmonics. As every violinist knows, to play extended passages in double-stopped harmonics is extremely difficult. Quint plays all such passages carefully and with grim determination ... and accurately. But did Paganini just toss them off insouciantly and with much aplomb? Or did he approach them in the same way as Quint, and others?

I admire Quint's accuracy and style. I do miss the kind of swashbuckling, daredevil approach I suspect Paganini would have brought to the originals. I would like to have heard Kreisler play all these works a 100 years ago when he would have been 35 years old and in top form; I suspect Kreisler would have brought much charm to the music. Quint does well, and his pianist, Dmitriy Cogan, plonks and plinks discreetly where required. But I suspect I would have preferred Nicolò Paganini, or Fritz Kreisler in his prime.