As well as being an indispensabile instrument for accompanying violin sonatas, trios and quartets, the guitar was often used by Paganini as a solo instrument, especially during the years of his youth. All Paganini’s guitar compositions are written for ”chittarra [sic] francese”, as the musician frequently defined it, that is the guitar with six simple strings. In the last decade of the eighteenth

century this new type of guitar had definitively replaced the old five-string model, also known as the ”Spanish guitar”. The 37 Sonatas M.S. 84 are mostly two-movement compositions (only the eleventh and the last four are single-movement works), on the model of the sonatas for violin and guitar. The one thing that is missing, compared to these sonatas, is a genuine slow movement.

The first movement is always a Minuetto in 3/4 time, and is often of virtuoso character, whilst the second may be an Allegretto, a Valtz, a Rondoncino, etc. This recording was made using a copy of the Panormo guitar of 1822 built by the Renato Barone. In the ritornelli, Guido Fichtner has added occasional little variations and embellishments to Paganini’s score, offering a reading that is highly virtuoso, brilliant and full of imagination to these original, important examples of the history of the guitar in the nineteenth century.