JAVS Spring 2022

The Campagnoli Project was starting to feel like a thing— like my thing. Over the span of three years, I had published 14 recordings. If that doesn’t sound like a great yearly average, it’s admittedly not. I had an alibi: we had welcomed our second child, moved, and renovated our pre-war apartment (while also living there with our two-year-old, newborn, and cat) in the year 2016. Nonetheless, the project had new momentum, spurred by the concert and its enthusiastic reception. Around this time, I started recording with the talented Stuart Breczinski as my audio engineer. I relocated the project from my apartment to the tower of the historic Riverside Church, a space that is as beautiful acoustically as it is visually. I had started a blog not long before as well: thecampagnoliproject.com , where I posted write-ups of each caprice and my annotations in the score. As I started recording in earnest, the caprices kept surprising me with their quirkiness, substance, and soul. Caprice no. 16 turned out to be one of my all-time favorites. It doesn’t look like much on the page: it’s a mere five lines because the chords, played bariolage, are stacked to save room and ink. But the progressions are so painfully beautiful that I was willing to torture my left hand for hours to get it right. It is in E major, a very unfriendly key for violists playing three-note chords in first position. This piece is also another example of how wildly different the modern edition is to Campagnoli’s original. Looking at the two editions side by side, two things stand out: the simplicity of shorthand print in the manuscript, when compared to having every note and slur written out, and the creative variation of bowings suggested by Campagnoli: always simple, but sometimes also surprising (see Figure 11).

Riverside Church in Manhattan, Giles records on the 9th floor of the tower pictured. Photo courtesy of Kristina Giles.

Caprice no. 17, not to be left out, was a stand-alone number. The recital ended with the end of the book: the joyful and stately Caprice no. 41, in C major. The short piece reminds me of the much longer Passacaglia from Hindemith’s Sonata, op. 11, no. 5. It is clear that no. 41 was intentionally placed: it is a grand bookend for an Everest of a project. Especially if the book were played straight through in one evening. The recital was received enthusiastically and aired a month later on the WWFM classical radio station in New Jersey.

Figure 9: Campagnoli, 41 Caprices, no.1, mm.1-4.

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring 2022

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