Great Violinists and Pianists

This work offers concise biographical sketches of leading violinists and pianists and traces the development of playing and instrument-making from early Cremonese luthiers to nineteenth-century virtuosi. It combines portraits of makers and performers—Amati, Stradivari, Guarneri, Corelli, Tartini, Viotti, Spohr, Paganini, de Bériot, Ole Bull, Clementi, Moscheles, the Schumanns, Chopin, Thalberg, Gottschalk and Liszt—with anecdotes, career highlights, stylistic descriptions, and notes on pupils and technical innovations such as bow evolution. The focus is on completed careers and on how individual artists contributed to the art's technique, repertoire, and public reputation.