Paganini’s string quartets with guitar are amongst his very finest chamber compositions. Written for friends and private performances, they reveal the care he took in...

Paganini’s string quartets with guitar are amongst his very finest chamber compositions. Written for friends and private performances, they reveal the care he took in their construction. The dialogues in Quartet No. 6 are conversational but Nos. 11 and 13 are more advanced – here, formal ingenuity and melodic creativity are fused with great character. Paganini’s feel for aria-like lyricism, for operatic richness, conveyed with a variety of musical ideas, is at its zenith in these works.