It is said that Baillot used to hide his face when Paganini played a pizzicato with the left hand, harmonics, or a passage in staccato. Dancla, in his recollections, says: "I had noticed in Paganini his large, dry hand, of an astonishing elasticity; his fingers long and pointed, which enabled him to make enormous stretches, and double and triple extensions, with the utmost facility. The double and triple harmonics, the successions of harmonics in thirds and sixths, so difficult for small hands, owing to the stretch they require, were to him as child's play. When playing an accentuated pizzicato with the left hand, while the melody was played by the hand of the bow, the fourth finger pinched the string with prodigious power even when the other three fingers were placed."
There are anecdotes told of Paganini's artistic contests with rival violinists, chief among whom were Lafont and Lipinski, both of whom he eclipsed, and of his playing a concerto in manuscript at sight, with the music upside down on the rack.
Of his appearance we are told, in an account of a concert in London: "A tall, haggard figure, with long, black hair, strangely falling down to his shoulders, slid forward like a spectral apparition. There was something awful, unearthly in that countenance; but his play! our pen seems invol untarily to evade the difficult task of giving utterance to sensations which are beyond the reach of language." After detailing the performance, the account continues: "These excellencies consist in the combination of absolute mechanical perfection of every imaginable kind, perfection hitherto unknown and unthought of, with the higher attributes of the human mind, inseparable from eminence in the fine arts, intellectual superiority, sensibility, deep feeling, poesy, genius."
In regard to this accomplishment of playing on one string, a critic said: "To effect so much on a single string is truly wonderful; nevertheless any good player can extract more from two than from one. If Paganini really produces so much effect on a single string, he would certainly obtain more from two. Then why not employ them? We answer, because he is waxing exceedingly wealthy by playing on one." Paganini seems to have reasoned from the opposite point, viz., that if the retention of two strings be regarded with such wonder, how much greater the marvel will be if only one is used.
To offset these suggestions of charlatanism, or perhaps rather to show that, with all his charlatanism, Paganini was a marvel, we may see what effect his playing had upon some men who were not likely to be caught by mere trickery. Rossini, upon being asked how he liked Paganini, replied: "I have wept but three times in my life; the first, on the failure of my earliest opera; the second time, when, in a boat with some friends, a turkey stuffed with truffles fell overboard; and thirdly, when I heard Paganini play for the first time."
Spohr, after hearing him play, in 1830, said: "Paganini came to Cassel and gave two concerts, which I heard with great interest. His left hand and his constantly pure intonation were, to me, astonishing; but in his compositions and his execution I found a strange mixture of the highly genial and the childishly tasteless, by which one felt alternately charmed and disappointed."
George Hogarth, the musical critic, writes about Paganini's "running up and down a single string, from the nut to the bridge, for ten minutes together, or playing with the bow and the fingers of his right hand, mingling pizzicato and arcato notes with the dexterity of an Indian juggler." It was not, however, by such tricks as these, but in spite of them, that he gained the suffrages of those who were charmed by his truly great qualities,—his soul of fire, his boundless fancy, his energy, tenderness, and passion; these are the qualities which give him a claim to a place among the greatest masters of the art.
Perhaps the finest description of Paganini is the one written by Leigh Hunt:
"So play'd of late to every passing thought
With finest change (might I but half as well