Top 10 Hardest Paganini Pieces for the Violin
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- Опубликовано: 26 июл 2024
- Happy Thanksgiving! Not that Paganini and Thanksgiving have much to do with each other; his connotations with the Devil and his birthdate of October 27 peg him as more of a Halloween kind of guy, but nevertheless I'm giving Paganini the spotlight right now.
Paganini essentially invented virtuoso playing-not that there wasn't any virtuoso playing before Paganini, but Paganini expanded the technique toolbox into a toolshed. He was highly influenced by Locatelli and Duranowski, neither of which are well-recorded today, but they lay the foundation for Paganini's rocketlike ascension to virtuoso glory.
Among Paganini's most difficult technical stumbling blocks include extended left-hand pizzicato passages, extended artificial harmonic passages, extended tremolo passages, and extensive use of double, triple, and even quadruple stops. Musically, Paganini was not as adventurous as his pianistic counterpart Liszt would become. His large-scale writing (in concertos, sonatas, etc.) stay firmly within Classical tradition and his orchestral writing can even be said to be dull in parts. However, it is his downright miraculous expansion of violin technique that continues to wow listeners today.
10. Caprice No.1
0:00 Itzhak Perlman
0:19 Leonidas Kavakos
9. Carnival of Venice
0:49 Stefan Milenkovich
1:20 Salvatore Accardo
8. Caprice No.6
1:52 Tibor Kováč
7. Violin Concerto No.2
2:35 Yehudi Menuhin
3:19 Ruggiero Ricci
6. Caprice No.8
4:23 Ilya Gringolts
5. Variations on "I palpiti"
5:06 Roman Kim
6:14 Roman Kim
4. Caprice No.4
6:51 Ilya Gringolts
3. Violin Concerto No.1
7:32 Leonid Kogan
8:15 Hilary Hahn
2. Variations on "Nel cor più non mi sento"
9:05 Dmitri Makhtin
9:40 Yehudi Menuhin
1. Variations on "God Save the King"
10:18 Roman Kim
11:08 Roman Kim
Honorable mentions: Le Streghe, Violin Concerto No.3, Violin Concerto No.4, Moses Fantasy
/ calebhu 
Видеоклипы
the thing about difficult violin pieces vs difficult piano pieces is that with difficult piano pieces you may be able to withstand listening to a whole piece in a bad performance if you can somewhat tolerate the wrong notes, but with difficult violin pieces there's only so much screeching that you can listen to before it starts killing you from the inside
So true
This is why I think liszt made it better
@@LisztAddict i daresay even if Paganini was a pianist instead of a violinist Liszt would've still been the better composer
@@GICM If Paganini was a pianist he would be harmonically closer to Czerny than Liszt.
@@GICMobv, most of what paganini did is purely in realms of virtuosity for its own sake, liszt on the other hand...
Wake up babe new Caleb Hu video
‘I paid for the whole Stradivari, I use the whole Stradivari’ - Niccolo Paganini
Guarnerius*
11:26 pianists: **stare in horror**
Kinda playable with 2 hands 🗿
@@collinm.4652 the fact that its only "kinda playable" even with two hands is frightening in it of itself lmao
or 4:08
Paganini is the reason why I love violin music so much! Thank you Caleb for this wonderful video!
Off topic but ur Spanish fantasy made me re-evaluate what was is possible on a piano. Bravo
Kim‘s technic truly is staggering. I was actually wondering how you‘d rank his new transcription of Beethoven‘s 5th in your Top 100 violin pieces.
It could legit just be #1 lol
@@hdw11 he did say it was at least top 3
@@GICM
Where did he say that?
@@blabla5268 whoops nvm misremembered what he said. he said it's more difficult than the Eine Kleine transcription, which was no. 5 on the 100 list so the Beethoven 5 transcription is top 4 at least
in the replies to the pinned comment of that video
damn, it’s hard to imagine someone playing these just listening to the audio
I can see why such works of utmost dexterity and unmatchable technique had such an effect on Liszt as to completely transform his style of compositions and write the Transcendental and Paganini Études for the piano.
Also, Liszt wrote a carnaval de Venice(S. 700ii) as well , based off of Paganinis
paganini is the king of insanely difficult violin music. i think he must have been clinically insane, but with the talent to do it
Nice list :D
Me waiting for all the TwoSet folks to find this video
where’s flight of the bumblebee on this list
edit found it at 8:36
Interesting
Enjoyed the video I’ll look into playing those some day,
Linda’s grandson, Austin
My favorite RUclipsr uploaded YES!!! Could we have one of these for Medtner or Albeniz? (Or Ginastera)
eventually im sure
@@GICM Hopefully!! Ginastera Sonata 1 might be the best piece of all time (imo) its genius work, It would probably only be like 4th or 5th on Ginasteras though because I hear the concertos are heck and the other sonatas too!
Thanks! Always wanted to see which caprices were ACTUALLY the hardest. Mozart most difficult solo piano? Would be interesting to see
Nice
WHAT A SURPRISE (a welcome one ;))
About the great version of the Paganini No.4 Caprices, I recommend Tianwa Yang' s playing. She recorded WHOLE 24 caprices when she was 13.
A this is definitely my wake-up music wow this is really hard
Roman Kim is just absurd
mad lad he is
Can you do a scale of Popper's hardest cello works?
Make sure to turn on captions
3:18 - 3:31 .. I swear I've heard something like this in Liszt's Reminiscences de La Juive.
It sounds so similar to that.
6:45 those are some big chords
On violin, it's possible to play chords than a 20th.
6:51 i could be wrong but i think Shlomo Mintz and Tedi Papavrami are kinda in tune (though admittedly not far off from Gringolts)? Papavrami is somewhat musically interesting too
lmao i didnt realize mintz had a recording of this
4 isn't the hardest, I'd say, it's ok, 6 is a matter of good condition :D yes, difficult; 1 is a problem of stretching > also difficult. THX for sharing!
Top 10 Prokofiev hardest piano pieces please.
what do you think of the famous Alexander Markov recording of the 24 caprices?
you know what i bet if Paganini didn't write attractive melodies the general public at least would've shoved him aside just like Czerny even with all that virtuosity
though even so it's amusing how the original La Campanella is more charming melodically than the Liszt S. 141 version but it's the Liszt version that gets the love
True, Paganini is harmonically not much better than Czerny
The violin is screaming in pain after I accidently gave it to satan while playing this😊
"revised" diff scale:
1 New player: Andante in C - Elgar
2 Early Beginner: Minuet in G - Petzold/Suzuki
3 Early Intermediate: Ave Maria - Gounod
4 Late Intermediate: Salut D'amour - Elgar
5 Early Advanced: Czardas - Monti
6 Advanced: The Lark Ascending - Williams
7 Professional: Debussy Violin Sonata
8 Professional+: Carmen Fantasy - Sarasate
9 Virtuoso: I Palpiti - Paganini or Schönberg Phantasy
10 Virtuoso+: Any violin concerto harder than Shostakovich.
#10 Caprice 1: 8+
#9 Carnival of Venice: 8+
#8 Caprice 6: 8+
#7 Violin Concerto #2: 10?
#6 Caprice 8: 8+++
#5 I Palpiti: 9
#4 Caprice 4: 9
#3 Violin Concerto: 10?
#2 Nel Cor Piu Non Mi Sento: 9+
#1 Variations on God Save the Queen: 9++
Great work! can you do this with Giovanni botessini please?
not sure if he really wants to do any other instruments other than violin and piano. plus it probably also depends if good recordings and readable sheet music is available or not
5:06 Roman is definitely not playing what is written. To those in the know, the sound of him employing his trademark forced harmonics technique is quite clear! Some notes are simply far too bright to have been played on the G and D strings as notated.
He uses this to deliver some nice tricks: notice at 6:01 he is actually playing an octave *lower* than written! These notes simply do not exist on the instrument in conventionally accessible artificial harmonics. Consider the very first note: a double stop between a C5 and an E5. The E exists conventionally -- it can be played as the third partial of the lowest A on the instrument (a perfect twelfth above the fundamental), requiring only a hand span of a perfect fifth, a mild stretch which is directly called for elsewhere in the score anyway. But the only way to produce the C is to play it as the second partial of the lowest C on the instrument (a perfect octave above the fundamental) -- but not even Roman can realistically make his hand span an entire octave, I am sure, and to add insult to injury, both of these notes must be played on the G string, which means that without Roman's technique, the double stop called for would be clearly unplayable.
Additionally, notice that in the ensuing arpeggio in the following bar at 6:05, he plays the pitch F4 instead of what is written (sounding F5, a perfect twelfth above the lowest B-flat on the instrument) as a standard note "sul tasto" instead of a harmonic, followed by the pitch A4, which he is clearly fingering as a forced harmonic on the lowest A on the instrument, as evidenced by its slight failure to speak properly revealing the fundamental tone (which is A3). Transitioning on the fly between regular notes and forced harmonics is very hard, so I obviously forgive him for his slight inaccuracy, as his harmonics technique is absolutely stellar, far better than mine. But he is clearly doing this because he wishes to preserve the shape of the arpeggio even an octave lower. And while the harmonic sounding as A4 again does not conventionally exist on the instrument (it only exists as the second partial above A3, which would demand an impossible octave-wide hand span), there is not even any forced harmonic sounding as F4, so he is forced to play it conventionally and try to just blend the tone to mask it.
Further, notice Roman seems to be glissing up to the G he lands on in the next bar at 6:08. Of course that makes sense if the note you just played was fingered as the forced harmonic on A3 in first position and he then had to slide up to fourth position, in order to play the pitch G4 in the only way that is possible (as the second partial of the open G string). Naturally, this could be easily hidden, but he chooses to emphasize it for effect. As written, sounding one octave higher, the player is only asked to make small changes in position, and for the last three notes they may remain entirely in third, so a glissando would be uncalled for an unexplained there.
Yes, as he says, it is "his version". I'm sure Paganini would have been quite impressed
i mean if the man (assuming that he is a man that is) can play with his teeth he can do anything he wants
A little off topic......but plz suggest a recording of Respighi's Concerto Gregonario where the violinist has decent intonation.
not really sure how decent you want it, Andrea Cappelletti's recording seems relatively decent enough to me (?)
What software/website do you use to make your top 10 videos?
Just one thing I want to say to Roman Kim: Is the violin delicious?
Btw he is one of the best violinists I have seen ❤
Caleb, will you ever do one of these for Mereaux or thalberg?
I am planning on doing that. But at the moment I do not have the resources to make or edit a video. I don't know why it's so difficult to find something that works.
Same thing here, I am planning to make "The hardest classical guitar pieces" video, but acquiring music sheets, assembling and aligning them with the audio is a really tough ask.
I'm a teenager by the way. @@kasajizo8963
Wieniawski's Variations on the Austrian [today's German] National Anthem, the final etude in his L'ecole moderne, may very well be even harder than Paganini's Variations on God Save the King. As far as I know, the only violinist who has ever recorded it is Ruggiero Ricci. I think a Wieniawski edition of this series could be interesting, but there are lots of other composers.
yeah it very well could be harder than God Save the King, though mind you im pretty sure Roman Kim can still demolish it
the thing is there's less techniques and it's shorter but with roughly the same techniques so i don't think it would be harder just the same difficulty
I'd argue it's harder than some of cage's freeman etudes.
There is also a piece by Ernst - can't remember the name, but it is based on a common tune at the time - which is probably also harder than Paganini's God Save the King... I think it's Last Rose of Summer, but not sure.
you know i think caprice 5 (with the legendary kavakos recording even maybe) could've been a pretty based intro
You ranked the sauret cadenza instead of what was actually made by Paganini.
you snooze you lose
Yes, I know its kinda cheating
btw would caprice 5 make it here if you use the suggested fingerings?
Bowings? Yeah probably
@@calebhu6383 lmao my pianist brain:
wait i just realized another thing....
A CALEB VIDEO WITHOUT A *SINGLE* SCHUMANN REFERENCE????? WHAT UNIVERSE IS THIS XD???
never tried pag 6 too seriously but i think it's not that bad once you get past the speed barrier
i think it's more of a time spent thing, you can learn it if you have a good basis on trills
Trills are probably one of the hardest techniques on violin, with chords, double stops, and harmonics being harder.
Caprice 6 is like 300 seconds of *polyphonic trills?* so I'd argue it's near caprice 4 difficulty.
may I ask what double stops are ?
I only play the piano so I do't quite understand it
@@amiapsychopat 2 notes
nice list but def would have included caprice 12 his sonata for violin solo and variations on a theme by guiseppe weigl
I'm no violinist, but isn't Caprice No. 24 very difficult too? Curious to know why it isn't in this list. Btw, great video. I never really listened to a lot of Paganini before.
Caprice 24 is indeed hard, but not the hardest in the 24 caprices
Pag 24 isn't that hard as other pieces
Bro, ive never even heard of carnival of vanice, it sounds complicated
It's harmonically very simple but yes the technique grows progressively more complicated throughout the piece.
@calebhu6383 yeah, I'm in symphonic orchestra in college and I'm a 1st violin 4th chair, I've been practicing this for a while for solos coming up and I'm making good progress but if I can't finish it withing the next few months I might opt out and choose a different piece
@calebhu6383 I will say though on the Carni of vanice
VAR.XII is truly the hardest page😂
9:40 didn't know Menuhin played stuff like this lmao
Menuhin was based as fuck, he even recorded Nel Cor while Heifetz pussied out
the yngwie malmsteem of his day
Medtner
Cool but Medtner video when ?
Maybe on his birthday of Jan 1st ? PLZ CALEB DO A MEDTNER VIDEO
@@hungviet9422 well at this point i think it's more likely for him to make a Medtner video than an Alkan video
I think Op 25 No 2 will probably be in the top 2.
@@ladivinafanatic wat about minacossia ?
@@samaritan29 top 3 perhaps
I dont know what he had wanted from the king but I only know he couldnt take it
That one person: What about caprice No. 24?
i wonder, would it be harder to play all the 24 caprices in one go than just God Save the King alone (i assume yes)?
Definitely harder to play the 24 caprices. It would be like playing all the Transcendental etudes vs. just playing Spanish Fantasy or something like that
the 24 caprices is like 1 hour+ it would be like performing an entire concert of insanely hard pieces
2:02 you definitely can't whistle in Chasse Neige tho ;)
That's the predecessor of Liszt's S.140/1 though lol
hold on...i just realized something
YOU JUST BROKE RICHTER'S STREAK NOOOOOOOOOOOO
Paganini doesn't count
@@calebhu6383 how dare he not be able to play violin and be called the GOAT?!!!
What about the difficulty level of each piece?
I'd put them all at hard
devil/10
Caprice 1: 8
Carnival of Venice: 8+
Caprice 6: 8+
Violin Concerto 2: cannot compare difficulty
Caprice 8: 8+
I palpati: 8++
Caprice 4: 8++
Violin Concerto 1: cannot compare difficulty
Nel cor piu non mi sento: 9
Variations on God Save the King: 9+
@@pulsar2049 why not compare only the violin parts of the concertos (assuming the orchestra is your problem)?
@@GICM No, you cannot compare because
length. Paganini's concertos are harder than any caprice as they are > 20 min.
In fact maybe I can play something harder
Linda’s grandson Austin
I am not sure who was showing off more ? The devil or our friend Nicky ? The transcription looks like modern art .
lmfao "Nicky"
kid
@@ShutUpZewenThisIsNotBased lamb
@@coopsawright7225 yes
@@ShutUpZewenThisIsNotBased Angel, is that you ?
Why though 💀
because paganini
Paganini didn’t write that cadenza
he acknowledged that fact in the subtitles
The sauret cadenza is harder than the concerto itself.
Good luck playing that on piano let alone violin
especially the last one lmao
This are cool, but I just cannot stand the sound of violin for some reason, it just sounds appalling in every way for me. Idk probably just me
maybe it's just Paganini? is it still a problem with other composers?
@@GICM yes, anything with violin I just don’t like it, I guess it sounds the exact opposite of piano and I love how piano sounds
I feel the same way about the typical organ sound
@@herobrine1847 yeah just too much noise
Hard music is very easy to butcher lol. It’s prob just Paganini
-basically ignores Pag gods like Kavakos and Kogan [ed: Ning Feng too, all three widely recognized as Pag specialists unlike most violinists included here] and includes anti-Pag plebs like H*hn
-no double harmonics of GSTK
lol stick to piano comps
The video literally features both Kavakos and Kogan 💀
Oh boohoo no double harmonics in gstk when the longest excerpt in this video is the i palpiti double harmonics
Also Accardo, Ricci, Kim, and Milenkovich are all Paganini specialists. Gringolts won the Paganini competition. What are you even on about bro 😂😂
Lol you just got destroyed