Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Violin

Paganini Devil’s Violinist or Genius

Did Niccolò Paganini sell his soul to the Devil? At the very least, he must have leased it.

Paganini, born on this date in 1782, is often stated to have been the greatest violinist who ever lived. He took up the mandolin at the age of 5, and was playing his first fiddle by 7. His professional career began at 15, when he embarked on his first solo tour.

In an era teeming with extraordinary violinists, Paganini transcended them all. In fact, so far did he outstrip his peers, there were rumblings that, if he himself had not bargained his soul, then surely his mother must have.

At 13, he was sent to study with renowned violinist Alessandro Rolla. Rolla quickly ascertained that there was nothing he could teach this terrifying prodigy. So he referred him to his own teacher, Ferdinando Paer, who in turn handed him up the ladder to his teacher, Gasparo Ghiretti.

Despite Paganini’s preternatural talent, his early success began to take its toll. Almost immediately, he suffered a nervous breakdown and began drinking heavily. He also became a prodigious gambler and a prolific womanizer.

Combined with his uncanny abilities as a performer, his flamboyant lifestyle laid the foundation for the Paganini legend. It was said he once murdered a woman and used her intestines to string his violin, so that her imprisoned soul could be heard screaming as he played. Some claimed that sulfur could be smelled during his performances. Another swore that he saw the Devil standing beside him. Yet another, that he was the Devil himself. Paganini doppelgangers began to appear, bearing horns and hooves. Once, lightning struck the end of his bow as he played. Or so the stories went.

And if you saw Paganini, you’d probably believe it was all true. He was tall and thin, with hollow cheeks and pale skin, thin-lipped and adorned in black. His pallid hand, with unusually long, flashing fingers, raced hypnotically up and down the strings of his violin like an enormous, acrobatic spider. Its unusual span and uncanny flexibility have been attributed in modern times to genetic irregularities, Marfan’s syndrome, and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Or perhaps he simply sold his soul to the devil.

Paganini’s skills on the violin were unparalleled. It’s said that he could play twelve notes per second. He performed without sheet music, contorted, and swung wildly about the stage. His outlandish mannerisms earned him the nickname “Rubber Man.”

Already sickly for most of his life, he contracted syphilis in 1822. This was treated with mercury, which led to further issues. In 1834, he contracted tuberculosis. He recovered, but retired from the stage later that year, at the age of 54. He spent his last years teaching.

Shortly before his death, of larynx cancer, at 57 in 1840, a priest arrived to administer last rites, but Paganini turned him away. It might have been because he was convinced he wasn’t going to die. Or it could have been because of… something else.

Paganini’s final tour was posthumous. When the Church refused to bury his body in consecrated ground, it was sent around Europe for the next four years, where it lay in state. When burial was still denied, it spent a year in a cellar. Then it was taken to a leper house. After that, it was moved to a cement vat in an olive factory. Then to a private house. Finally, Pope Gregory XVI allowed Paganini’s remains to be laid to rest in La Villetta Cemetery in Parma.

Niccolò Paganini was a Romantic icon, with a capital “R.” Hector Berlioz, himself no slouch in the seething Romantic department, wrote “Harold in Italy” so that Paganini could show off his new viola. Paganini didn’t think the solo part was flashy enough, and though he came eventually to admire the piece, he never actually played it. Even so, he continued to help Berlioz financially during his later years. He also became a good friend of Rossini.

Numerous other composers were inspired by Paganini’s own music. Liszt, another kindred spirit, who modeled his own concert persona after Paganini’s, wrote a set of “Paganini Etudes.” And how many composers have written sets of variations on Paganini’s famous 24th Caprice? Franz Lehár even wrote an operetta, highly fictionalized, about a romance between the virtuoso and Napoleon’s sister, Princess Anna Elisa.

Whether or not you believe the legends, Paganini sure could play like the Devil. Happy birthday, Niccolò Paganini, wherever you are!

Alexander Markov plays Paganini’s 24th Caprice

Ruggiero Ricci plays all of them

Claudio Arrau plays Liszt’s “Paganini Etude No. 6”

Liszt’s “Paganini Etudes,” complete (the only live performance on YouTube)

Rachmaninoff, “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” at the Proms, with Stephen Hough the soloist (the famous 18th Variation appears 15 minutes in)

Brahms, “Variations on a Theme by Paganini,” played by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy3miJmU-dk

Boris Blacher, “Orchestral Variations on a Theme by Paganini”

Witold Lutoslawski, “Paganini Variations,” with Argerich and Kissin

From Lehár’s “Paganini”

Alfredo Casella, “Paganiniana”

Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 2 “La campanella” (with its famous “little bell” finale beginning around 19 minutes in)

October 27, 2025
The Devil and Rutger Hauer

Has anyone seen this?

The premise reminds me of J. Meade Falkner’s “The Lost Stradivarius” (1895), which I finally got around to reading only a few years ago. Except in that one, the violin summons the spirit of a profligate as opposed to the Antichrist. Points then, for the film swinging for the fences.

Rutger Hauer as a Satanic composer? I’m in!

October 14, 2025
Fritz Kreisler Sesquicentennial: Violin Legend

Somehow, as I was in the thrall of the groundhog yesterday, I failed to equate February 2 with the birthday of Fritz Kreisler. And I’d had my eye on it, too, because it happened to be an important one. Kreisler was born on February 2, 1875 – 150 years ago.

In contrast to the cool intensity of his colleague, the great violinist Jascha Heifetz, who subjected himself to a punishing, though strictly secret, regimen of self-discipline in pursuit of superhuman perfection, Kreisler was warm, gregarious, and easygoing. As a sweet-toned confectioner and purveyor of violin bonbons, Kreisler ruffled feathers, not with his playing, but because he casually let slip that many of the 18th century “rediscoveries” he had used to charm audiences, critics, and musicologists were not in fact rediscoveries at all. Nor did they date from the 18th century. Rather they were composed by Kreisler himself. When the professionals complained, Kreisler shrugged.

It would be futile to argue against his serious musical credentials. He gave the world premiere of the Elgar concerto and became a favorite recital partner of Sergei Rachmaninoff. A famous anecdote relates that Kreisler and Rachmaninoff were giving a concert in New York. In the middle of a performance, Kreisler suffered a memory lapse, and as he noodled around on his violin, trying to find his way back, he inched closer to his pianist. “Where are we?” Kreisler whispered. To which Rachmaninoff replied, “Carnegie Hall.”

In 1941, Kreisler was crossing the street, when he was hit by a milk truck. The accident fractured his skull and put him in a coma. Like something out of an early Woody Allen comedy, when he awoke, he could communicate only in Latin and Greek. Thankfully, the effect was only temporary.

Kreisler met Heifetz, with whom he shared a birthday (Heifetz was born in Vilnius on February 2, 1901), for the first time at a private press party in 1912. After listening to the boy play through the Mendelssohn concerto, Heifetz declared, “We can all just break our fiddles over our knees.”

Happy belated birthday, and a joyous sesquicentennial, Fritz Kreisler. And since February 3 happens to be the anniversary of the birth of Felix Mendelssohn, here’s Kreisler performing Mendelssohn’s evergreen concerto.

Kreisler plays the “Meditation” from Massenet’s “Thaïs”

Kreisler, master of the miniature

Kreisler and Rachmaninoff play Schubert

Kreisler plays Rachmaninoff

Rachmaninoff plays Kreisler

Kreisler with John McCormack, in an aria from Benjamin Godard’s “Jocelyn”

Two-part radio interview on the occasion of Kreisler’s 80th birthday, with spoken tributes from Elman, Menuhin, Milstein, Stern, Szigeti and others:

February 3, 2025
Remembering Norman Carol Philly Legend

Even though I continue to attend the occasional Philadelphia Orchestra concert (most recently on April 11 to hear Mahler 7 and, coming up, Sibelius 5), for me the glory days of my attendance were from the mid-‘80s to the mid-‘90s, when I was there nearly every week, often standing in line for a couple of hours on a Friday or Saturday evening, with a cup of coffee and a friend or a book, in order to score a $2.00 seat in the amphitheater at the old Academy of Music. (The price was later raised to $2.50.) Norman Carol, therefore, will always be the Philadelphia Orchestra concertmaster closest to my heart.

Carol joined the orchestra, at the invitation of Eugene Ormandy, in 1966. He served as concertmaster (succeeding Anshel Brusilow) under Ormandy, Riccardo Muti, and Wolfgang Sawallisch. His retirement in 1994, I remember, came ahead of his scheduled performance as soloist in Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, the piece with which he had made his Philadelphia solo debut decades earlier. As I recall, he had been playing through excruciating shoulder pain and he just couldn’t do it anymore.

In the years of my attendance, I was fortunate to hear Carol step up from his position as leader of the orchestra to solo in many concertos. One of the most memorable, for me, was that of Benjamin Britten, which, at the time, I had never heard before.

Prior to his position in Philadelphia, Carol had played in the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Serge Koussevitzky (who extended the invitation to join when Carol was 17) and Charles Munch. He was concertmaster with the orchestra, when, under Leonard Bernstein, it gave the U.S. premiere of Britten’s “Peter Grimes” at Tanglewood in 1946.

Following service in the Korean War (André Previn relates playing with Carol and Chet Baker at the Presidio in his book “No Minor Chords”), he became concertmaster of the New Orleans Symphony and then the Minneapolis Symphony, under Antal Doráti and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. Decades later, Carol would give the premiere of Skrowaczewski’s Violin Concerto in Philadelphia, as Skrowaczewski guest conducted.

As a student at the Curtis Institute, Carol was groomed for a solo career. He went on to record an early recital for RCA. Later, of course, he played solo violin passages on all the Philadelphia Orchestra recordings from the time he joined the group, including Ormandy’s later recordings of “Ein Heldenleben” and “Scheherazade.”

After his retirement, he continued to perform and record with the Philadelphia Piano Quartet. He also taught orchestral repertoire at Curtis. (He was on the Curtis faculty for some 40 years.) His violin, a 1743 Guarneri “del Gesù,” formerly belonged to Albert Spalding. Spalding gave the first public performances of Barber’s Violin Concerto in Philadelphia in 1941.

Carol was old school, tuning the orchestra in evening dress, his wavy hair impeccably Brylled, seemingly unflappable in his reserve. But when he played, he played like the principal of one of the greatest orchestras in the land. I knew him neither as a man nor behind the scenes, but only from my vantage in the appreciative audience. He embodied the traditions of a fabled era. His like will not come again.

Carol, who was born in Philadelphia, died on Sunday at the age of 95. R.I.P.

Carol plays the Nielsen Violin Concerto

Big band Telemann

1958 recorded recital with Julius Levine

Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” featuring solos by Carol, violist Joseph De Pasquale, and cellist Samuel Mayes

Two-part interview with Ovation Press:

Part 1

Interview with Norman Carol, Part 1

Part 2

Interview with Norman Carol, Part 2

May 1, 2024
Fritz Kreisler & Jascha Heifetz: Fiddling Legends

February 2 is not just a day for groundhogs. It also marks the anniversaries of the births of two of the world’s greatest fiddlers.

Fritz Kreisler, the sweet-toned confectioner and purveyor of violin bonbons, was born in Vienna on this date in 1875. Jascha Heifetz, the superhuman technician, who imbued perfection with tonal beauty, was born in Vilnius in 1901. Kreisler was warm, gregarious and easygoing. Heifetz acquired a reputation for a certain cool intensity.

At a point, Kreisler ruffled feathers, not with his playing, but because he casually let slip that many of the 18th century “rediscoveries” he had used to charm audiences, critics, and musicologists were not in fact rediscoveries at all. Nor did they date from the 18th century. Rather they were composed by Kreisler himself. When the professionals complained, Kreisler shrugged.

It would be futile to argue against his serious musical credentials. He gave the world premiere of the Elgar concerto and became a favorite recital partner of Sergei Rachmaninoff. A famous anecdote relates that Kreisler and Rachmaninoff were giving a concert in New York. In the middle of a performance, Kreisler suffered a memory lapse, and as he noodled around on his violin, trying to find his way back, he inched closer to his pianist. “Where are we?” Kreisler whispered. To which Rachmaninoff replied, “Carnegie Hall.”

In 1941, Kreisler was crossing the street, when he was hit by a milk truck. The accident fractured his skull and put him in a coma. Like something out of an early Woody Allen comedy, when he awoke, he could communicate only in Latin and Greek. Thankfully, the effect was only temporary.

Kreisler met Heifetz for the first time at a private press party in 1912. After listening to the boy play through the Mendelssohn concerto, he declared, “We can all just break our fiddles over our knees.” Arthur Nikisch, conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, said he had never heard such an excellent violinist. The year before, Heifetz had played before a crowd of 25,000, and police had to be summoned to prevent the young virtuoso from being mobbed.

A little more collected was Groucho Marx. When Heifetz met Groucho, he mentioned that he had been earning his living as a violinist since the age of seven. Groucho responded, “Before that, I suppose, you were just a bum.”

Aside from his astounding accomplishments on the concert stage, Heifetz appeared as a mess hall jazz musician in Allied camps across Europe during the Second World War. Under a pseudonym, he wrote “When You Make Love to Me (Don’t Make Believe)” for Bing Crosby. In addition, Heifetz and Bing recorded the “Lullaby” from Benjamin Godard’s opera “Jocelyn.”

Heifetz was an advocate for certain socio-political and environmental causes. Decades before it was a thing, he had his Renault converted into an electric vehicle, and he lobbied for the acceptance of 911 as an emergency number.

Once, after a performance in Israel, he was attacked by a man wielding a crowbar for programming a violin sonata by Richard Strauss. Strauss had remained in Germany during World War II and maintained a fraught relationship with the Nazis. Heifetz, by the way, was Jewish.

Composers who wrote music for him, or whose music he premiered, include Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Sir William Walton. Heifetz commissioned Arnold Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto, but he never played it.

His standard of performance was stratospheric, and he subjected himself to a punishing, though strictly secret, regimen of self-discipline. He delivered until he felt he no longer could, retiring from the concert stage in 1972.

Itzhak Perlman reflected, “The goals he set still remain, and for violinists today, it’s rather depressing that they may never really be attained again.”

Here’s a French film about Heifetz. Interestingly, it opens with him playing one of Kreisler’s forgeries, the “Praeludium and Allegro in the Style of Pugnani”

Kreisler plays the “Meditation” from Massenet’s “Thaïs”

Kreisler plays the Mendelssohn concerto

Kreisler, master of the miniature

Two-part radio interview on the occasion of Kreisler’s 80th birthday, with spoken tributes from Elman, Menuhin, Milstein, Stern, Szigeti and others:

Footage of Heifetz performing Grigoras Dinicu’s “Hora Staccato.” The conductor is Donald Vorhees, longtime music director of the Allentown Symphony Orchestra in Allentown, PA.

Heifetz plays the first movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in the 1947 film “Carnegie Hall.” That’s Fritz Reiner on the podium.

From back in the day when classical music was still popular entertainment, Heifetz playing Schubert and Mendelssohn in a short film, with Piatigorsky and Rubinstein. The three of them actually get to act (albeit badly).

Heifetz and Jack Benny

Heifetz and Bing Crosby with the “Lullaby” from Godard’s “Jocelyn”

Heifetz’s popular hit (as Jim Hoyle), sung by Bing

Heifetz plays it – on the piano!

February 2, 2023

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