Rhapsody on a theme of paganini

In a letter to Mikhail Folkine, in which Rachmaninov comments on the program in his Rhapsody on a Paganini theme, he writes that Paganini probably had to sell his soul to the devil in order to gain such tremendous virtuosity on the violin and the heart of a particular woman. Rachmaninov referred to the “Dies Irae” motive from the sequence of Thomas von Celano and the compositional connection with the famous theme from the last piece of the “24 Capricci” for solo violin, by Niccolo Paganini. Rachmaninov composed the Rhapsody with twenty-four variations in just a few months in the summer of 1934. In the same year at the Lake Lucerne the premiere took place with Rachmaninov as a soloist.