Caprice No. 24

Look­ing up the neo-classical heavy metal musi­cian Yng­wie Malm­steen on Wikipedia led me to an arti­cle I wouldn’t have expected to land on, the arti­cle for Paganini’s Caprice No. 24, a com­po­si­tion for the violin.

Evi­dently, Paganini was one of Malmsteen’s biggest influ­ences (would that make Paganini roll over in his grave, or would he be proud?), and a por­tion of Caprice No. 24 even made it into one of Malmsteen’s works in 2000, albeit adapted for the elec­tric guitar.

I was curi­ous what Caprice No. 24 sounded like, though. Accord­ing to its Wikipedia arti­cle, it’s one of the most demand­ing com­po­si­tions for the vio­lin and few vio­lin play­ers ever acquire the skills to play it completely.

Here’s a video I found on YouTube:

Welp, I’m impressed. I’ve never seen any­one play the fid­dle vio­lin like that. I don’t mean to cheapen the per­for­mance or piece with this, but around the 1:45 mark I couldn’t help but be reminded of heavy metal gui­tar solos. The rest of the piece was great. Browse around on YouTube for more ren­di­tions of it, includ­ing one report­edly by a five-year-old!

(If you’re won­der­ing what this has to do with either “King­dom” or “Geek,” well, then, I’m sorry you didn’t appre­ci­ate the video as I’m hop­ing some of you will.)