Niccolo Paganini, born in Genoa, was the rock star of his day.  He was handsome and a fantastic virtuoso showman.  He possessed unusually long fingers and had extreme flexibility, which allowed him to perform musical feats on the violin others could only dream of.  He was often mobbed on the streets. Audiences would be brought to tears when he played slow movements and to the edge of their seats when he dazzled them with his ferocity.  He was enormously successful in his own lifetime and completely revolutionized violin technique. It is not a myth that people believed Paganini had made a pact with the Devil who was deemed responsible for his prodigious talent. Many still consider him the greatest violinist of all time.

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Beethoven
Copland
Debussy
Mendelssohn
Offenbach
Paganini
Puccini
Saint-Saens
Stravinsky