Virtuosic Pieces for Violin Solo

Album review

Exhumed from the archives of SWR Baden-Baden Radio in Germany, this recording comes at just the right moment to remind us all of a musician who has been somewhat forgotten today, the American violinist Ruggiero Ricci. Born in California in 1918, Ricci has lived on in the memory of music fans thanks to his famous recordings of Paganini's 24 Caprices, Lalo's Symphonie espagnole and two concertos by Prokofiev recorded in Geneva with Ernest Ansermet and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. This son of Italian immigrants first learned violin with his father, just like his sister, who would go on to become a violinist in the New York Metropolitan Opera. As for his brother George, he became a cellist. A child prodigy, Ruggiero played Mendelssohn's concerto at the age of eleven, and a short while later made a very successful début at Carnegie Hall. By the end of his life (he passed away in 2012 at the age of 94), he had totted up 6,000 concerts in 65 different countries over the course of a career spanning 70 years.

These studio recordings were made in 1983 at the age of 65, and they reveal a musician on blistering form. Ricci liked to say that he had developed his marvellous technique all on his own, because his many teachers never told him anything about technique. When he played before Fritz Kreisler in 1929, the latter embraced him effusively and emphatically declared him the greatest genius since... Mozart! He was still laughing about it sixty years later. Ruggiero Ricci published a violin manual, "Left Hand Violin Technique". This album, although a little stingy in length, will dazzle fans, discourage beginners, and amuse violinists. It contains joyous versions of works by composer-violinists: Kreisler, Wieniawski, Ernst and Paganini. © François Hudry/Qobuz