SPONSORED: So Much, for So Many. R Murray Schafer's 'My Life on Earth and Elsewhere', read by A P Virag.
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VIDEO PODCAST: Come and meet Eric Fraad of Heresy Records, Kenneth Woods, musical director of Colorado MahlerFest and the English Symphony Orchestra and others in our hour-long March 2021 video.
American violinist Ruggiero Ricci was born in California to Italian immigrants on 24 July 1918. His first violin lessons were with his father, and from the age of seven he studied with Elizabeth Lackey and Louis Persinger. He first played in public at ten, and at eleven played the Mendelssohn concerto. He studied in Berlin in the 1930s, learning in the tradition of Adolf Busch with Georg Kulenkampff.
Ricci became the first violinist to record Paganini's 24 Caprices Op 1 in their original form, and gave many premieres, including of violin concertos by Gerard Schurmann, Alberto Ginastera and Gottfried von Einem.
His solo career lasted seventy years, he made more than five hundred recordings and taught at Indiana University, Juilliard, the University of Michigan and at Universität Mozarteum Salzburg.
Ruggiero Ricci died on 6 August 2012, aged ninety-four.
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CD Spotlight. Thrilling Mastery - Tanja Becker-Bender plays Paganini, reviewed by Howard Smith. '... sparkling clarity and power ...'