A Biographical Dictionary of Fiddlers di A. Mason Clarke
Biographical Dictionary of Fiddlers. 1.09
Paganini was then at Genoa and hearing that Lafont was giving concerts at Milan he immediately proceeded to that city for the purpose of hearing him play. " His performance," said Paganini, "pleased me considerably." A week afterwards Paganini gave a concert at La Scala, at which Lafont was present, and the next day proposed that Paganini and himself should perform on the same evening. " I excused myself," said Paganini " on the ground that such experiments were always impolitic, as the public invariably looked upon such matters as duels, in which there was always a victim, and that it would be so in this case; for as he was acknowledged the best violinist in France, so the public indulgently considered me as the best of Italian violinists. Lafont not looking at it in this light, I was obliged to accept the challenge. I allowed him to regulate the programme, which he did in the following manner:—We each played a concerto of our own composition, after which we played a duo concertante by Kreutzer. In this I did not deviate in the least from the composer's text while we played together, but in the solo parts I yielded freely to my own imagination, and introduced several novelties, which seemed to annoy my adversary. Then followed a Russian air, with variations, by Q
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Dictionary Fiddlers Genoa Lafont Milan His Paganini Paganini La Scala Lafont Paganini Paganini France Italian Kreutzer Russian Lafont
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