Ruggiero Ricci’s performing career spanned 75 years, with more than 6,000 concerts in 65 countries, and over 500 recordings. In his nineties he was still active in giving masterclasses.

His career started with a San Francisco debut at the age of ten, playing Vieuxtemps, Saint-Saëns, Mendelssohn and Wieniawski, which amazed the audience and caused him to be hailed as a true prodigy. He had begun learning with his father and then had lessons from Louis Persinger (who also taught Yehudi Menuhin and Guila Bustabo at that time). During the 1930s Ricci studied in Berlin with Georg Kulenkampff, consciously adopting the strengths of the German style of playing and aiming to emulate Kreisler and Heifetz. In 1942 he enlisted in the US Army as an ‘Entertainment Specialist’, giving hundreds of broadcasts and concerts, often without a pianist, and thus developing his knowledge of unaccompanied repertoire. At 14 his first European tour had been a highly sensationalised series of concerts and it was at this time that Ricci undertook to master Paganini’s Caprices on the premise that in order to excel in technique one should tackle the most difficult music.

He gave a number of world premieres in his career, including works by Ginastera, Von Einem, Goehr and Veerhoff, and his discography quite possibly encompasses the widest repertoire of any violinist.

Ricci taught at Indiana University, The Juilliard School, the University of Michigan and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and he produced two pedagogical books, Left Hand Violin Technique and Ricci on Glissando. Ruggiero Ricci’s musical voice is an important and unmistakable one and his recordings taken overall, as well as his extensive pedagogical work, testify to his greatness as one who has helped to mould modern violin playing.