24 violin caprices to be played

If violin players are the rock stars of the classical music world, then thin Saturday at 4:30 in Kulas Recital Hall, The Sex Pistols are opening up for Led Zeppelin. Violin Professor Gregory Fulkerson will be leading his students through Paganini's 24 Caprices for Solo Violin, which are widely considered the most difficult pieces ever written for the violin. Each of Professor Fulkerson's students will be playing a caprice(which is an Italian word suggesting a short and often whimsical piece) and Fulkerson will be playing two of them himself.

Niccolo Paganini(1782-1840) was born in the Italian town of Genoa and began touring professionally while still a teen, setting a new standard for technical mastery wherever he gave concerts. Paganini, with his long hair and bony features, was a great performer and enthralled his audiences with a flamboyant manner. One of Paganini's trademarks was to break all but one of his strings during a performance and then to complete the piece playing all the notes on one string. The violinist made a sensation in Austria, Germany, London, and Paris and developed a cult of followers amid stories of his having sold his soul to the devil. His enormous success brought most of the great composers and innovators of the Romantic style to his concerts, including Chopin and Lizt both of which wrote of having been affected by the virtuoso's musical compositions and passionate and technically advanced style of playing. Paganini single-handedly created the legend of the master violinist, a tradition that continued through Jascha Heifitz in the first half of the century and lives in today's Itzak Perlman.

The 24 Caprices have long stood as a challenge for aspiring virtuosos' technical mastery and fiery brilliance. No debut recital of a new nine year old wonder with perfect technique and a frighteningly profound interpretation is complete without rattling off one of the 24 Caprices. Professor Fulkerson says of the pieces' place in the violin repertoire, "Bach is about refinement and nuance. Paganini is about movement. These are the two extremes of violin playing". Each of the caprices represents a specific technical problem for the violinist to negotiate. For example, Number one is a series of chords that the player must execute by making the bow bounce back and forth on the four strings, catching one note on each one. Number twenty four, which will be played by professor Fulkerson, is a set of variations on a theme that represent each type of technique. While violin players enjoy the accomplishment of conquering the pieces, they are not approached without trepidation. Fulkerson studio members Elbert Tsai and Donna Bartlett express their affection for the Caprices, "Number Twelve Sucks", adding with a nervous laugh, "Actually, they all kind of suck!"