October 2014

Kreutzer before Paganini

"With all the comments of Kreutzer's 42 studies, I tried to go through some of them to see how it might help me in studying Paganini 24 caprices, and I found out that these caprices are an entirely different level of study compare to any other studies like Kreutzer, Rode, Fiorillo. I come to the conclusion that although these other studies will help establish a good basic technique, no matter how apt you are at them, you can never play Paganini without really going into it, because the technique is at a definite higher level, and to tackle them, the right thing is to go directly to it instead of doing all these preparatories.
Any views on this?"

this person's kidding, right? you have to start with Kreutzer at the very least to build technique and muscles. trust me I learned this the hard way

2 replies