Son's teacher asked me to get "any edition" of the 24 Paganini Caprices, and Mendelssohn's E Minor Concerto Op. 64.

I'd appreciate recommendations for clear and easy to read editions - this is in preparation for audition material, so needs to be some standard edition, but I'm not quite confident.

Certain editions are popular in Japan because they are fingered to suit small hands, but son doesn't have particularly small hands, so any orthodox acceptable edition is fine.

Thanks! I've really appreciated advice on editions in the past!

Caprices...seems like Flesch fingering is the more popular in Japan, but Galamian fingering elsewhere. The thinking here is that Galamian fingering requires huge stretches, but quite likely Galamian is just too too modern for Japan! If Galamian fingering requires such huge hands, why is it the standard even for women violinists in western countries (or is that actually not the case?)

Is the Flesch edition considered hopelessly old-fashioned out there in the real world?

Curiouser and curiouser!

STANDARD FINGERING? In the 21st century, we prefer to avoid such prescriptive methods, at least in the West we do. Paganini is now thought to have suffered from Marfan Syndrome, a genetic condition that cause the joints of the body to be overly supple. Unless you also suffer with this, or have overly long fingers, Paganini will provide diffculties for every player who tackles it.

If it hadn't been for a violinist with the foresight to alter the fingerings for me, I would never had had the opportunity to learn any of the Caprices.

The violinist Chloe Hanslip has very small hands and both her and her teacher have spent several years marking up the more modern violin concerti with fingerings that allow her to play the music without pain or strain, and at the same time without altering the composers intended colouring of the notes.

Flesch is rather outmoded these days. In fact, when the Flesch Scale System was last updated, Max Rostal added some additional fingering that he said, "took into account updated playing methods and fingerings".

Playing moves on, not only from a historical pedagogue point of view, but every players playing moves also on.

Galamian and Dorothy DeLay were the teachers of Simon Fischer, author of 'Basics' and 'Practice'. Indeed, Galamian was one of the first to accept that every player was different, not only mentally, but also physically. What was ideal hand position and fingering for one person, was not a one-size-fits-all, it needed to be adapted to the physique. Up until this time, there were only one-size-fits-all fingerings and if you couldn't play a piece of music by any of those strict rules, you were deemed incapable or a failure.

Thank you! Since there's a good chance that Viohazard will study music outside Japan, I always feel the need for a reality check. There's no point asking teachers here to use materials and methods they either don't know or mistrust, so I just let them get on with it, but it'd good to know what's current elsewhere.

I ended up getting "the big music store" to put aside Henle editions for both, and got husband to pick them up on his way home from work. Now he knows just how much this stuff costs...

Some helpful Japanese person's blog had images of the first two lines of the Caprices in the Henle double edition (urtext plus Barbieri bowing) and the Flesch edition, and even with two lines, there was no contest. The Flesch edition seemed to have the staccatos and slurs REVERSED in comparison with the original. Very odd.

The notes in the back of the Henle edition of the Mendelssohn Concerto are certainly excellent.

Viohazard's hands are a shade over 20cm long, from the crease of the wrist to tip of middle finger, so not particularly small, but his teacher is a little under 170cm tall and his hands are not particularly large for his height, so I think he worries about stretches more.

At least his teacher appeared to be happy with the editions Viohazard took to his lesson, whew!

P.S. As for Fischer, we have the "Practice" book, but the only Fischer known in the violin world in Japan is the 18th century Johann Kaspar Fischer. Move on indeed, what a heinously revolutionary concept!

edit: not Carl Fischer, stoopid...and not even Simon Fischer, it's the Gerle book I was thinking of. Must take more cold medicine. Or maybe I've already taken too much!

Recordings....Viohazard's teacher told him to listen to modern recordings of the Caprices as well as stuyding the music. Naturally Viohazard went straight for the speedy guys like Kavakos and Markov, but the Kavakos recording is not available at present here...meanwhile, whose recordings do you people recommend?

Markov plays at a speed that would have me aske the question, 'Where's the fire?".

Taking the word Presto in it's literal sense, is fast, but when the piece is Presto and contains only semi-quavers, there has to be a limit on how fast you can play it before it becomes a blurred wall of noise and consequently doesn't sound like music at all.

To be honest, there aren't that many modern recordings of the Caprices, probably because they are so difficult it takes years to be able to play them all well enough to lay them down on CD!

Many players will smaller hands avoid them altogether, unless like me they have a teacher who is not averse to changing fingerings to suit the smaller hand, but some of the Caprices contain intervals that cannot be adapted for the smaller hand, so they are ruled out altogether.

Sorry, I can't be of more help, but yes, I agree the two recordings you mention are very snazzy and speedy, but they aren't really a reflection of what Paganini wanted or indeed how he would have played it himself.

If you search YouTube there's a recording of Julia Fischer playing Caprice No. 16, but as someone has commented, she does play it rather like she was playing a Bach solo sonata or Partita movement. I agree with them, it really does need a little more emotional input, evocative of a late classica/early romantic style that was more in keeping with Paganini's time.

Yes, that was his teacher's point - that if he didn't listen to some good playing of the Caprices, he would get swallowed up in the technical issues and stop thinking of them as music.

He listened to Julia Fischer clip you mentioned, but thought he liked Hilary Hahn's playing of the Caprice (24th) better.

I find that we do have an Ehnes recording of all the Caprices, when I dug around under about 50 kg of sheet music in Viohazard's room ! I *thought* we had one complete recording...

Often used to see Midori's recording of the Caprices around in the shops, but not recently. It makes me wonder whether people who record the Caprices early in their careers are not satisfied with them a decade later, or whether it is just the recording company's reluctance to re-issue old recordings.

P.S. Speed...if there's one thing I notice about Viohazard switching to a male teacher a couple of years ago is that there are times when a 12 year old and a 26 year old think about NOTHING but how fast they can play! Thank goodness they've both got a little older since then .