Kreutzer before Paganini

Written by Catherine Stay
Published: October 25, 2014 at 3:09 PM [UTC]

"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

From Bart Meijer
Posted on October 26, 2014 at 7:18 AM

After a really thorough study of Kreutzer, I believe anything is possible. One of my teachers did just that: have me play Paganini caprices (5, 9, 13, 14, 17, 24) after six years of studying Kreutzer. It worked.
Edit: oh dear, now I have read the original statement better: it says that it is actually better to start Paganini without first studying Kreutzer etc. I cannot believe that works, and I'm glad no teacher tried that with me. In other words, I strongly disagree.

From Tom Holzman
Posted on October 26, 2014 at 9:38 PM

I think this person is nuts. A similar question is whether you should start trying to play Pagnini in your first year of violin and not worry about scales or etudes, just go directly to the most difficult. Nuts.

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Kreutzer before Paganini

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