"Ghiribizzi" are trifles, and that's what these little pieces by
Paganini are. Some of
Paganini's guitar music can be quite virtuosic (he was nearly as good a guitarist as he was a violinist), but these works, written in 1820 for a young woman in Naples who was learning to play the guitar, offer little in the way of challenges for the player or spectacle for the listener. They're little binary (or not even binary) tunes, many of them not even a minute long. Bits of other
Paganini tunes and even
Rossini float by, and the music is attractive for what it is -- it's relaxed rather than formal or constrained. Guitarist
Adriano Sebastiani makes the best of the music with sharp performances that differentiate nicely between the registers of the guitar, although he is recorded too close up. Ultimately this music gives a nice glimpse into how music was learned in Naples in 1820, although for the casual listener it's best suited as background -- hearing 43 short pieces one after another has its limitations.