James Ehnes, now 20 years old, made this recording last year. He’s a most remarkable young violinist (from Manitoba, trained at the Juilliard School). What is especially appropriate for Paganini is the boldness of his approach. It’s clear that Paganini himself liked to live dangerously, and Ehnes’s fearless tempos, plus the sheer confidence of his music-making, give us more than a glimpse of the amazement and delight the composer himself inspired.
This boldness is at its best in places like the moto perpetuo of the fifth Caprice, but there are many other fine things: the romantic, sensuous playing of the tremolando sixth Caprice, the very fast and mysterious No. 12 – sounding like Chopin for the violin.
So I’d certainly recomend this disc as a record of an exceptional young virtuoso, but as an interpreter of these especially demanding pieces he’s up against some stiff competition. Midori’s version, made when she was 17, makes more of Paganini’s many invitations to play delicately – the amoroso of No. 21 is one of a number of places where she sounds magical whilst Ehnes misses the mark. Her intonation, too, is amazingly accurate in the fast passages of double-stopping where Ehnes isn’t always spot-on. But she’s a more careful player, and, for me, her performance is sometimes lacking in verve and excitement. Perlman’s 1972 recording doesn’t sound so beautiful as the two more recent versions, but his performance often finds more in the music in terms of character, expression and especially humour. So it’s difficult to give a clear recommendation – each of these versions emphasizes a different facet of these remarkable pieces.'