Audiophile Violin

Salvatore Accardo; born September 26, 1941 in Turin, northern Italy) is an Italian violin virtuoso and conductor. Accardo studied violin in the southern Italian city of Naples in the 1950s. He gave his first professional recital at the age of 13 performing Paganini’s Capricci. In 1956 Accardo won the Geneva Competition and in 1958 became the first prize winner of the Paganini Competition in Genoa.

He has recorded Paganini’s 24 Caprices (re-recorded in 1999) for solo violin and was the first to record all six of the Paganini Violin Concertos. He has an extensive discography of almost 50 recordings on Philips, DG, EMI, Sony Classical, Foné, Dynamic, and Warner-Fonit. Notably, he has recorded an album of classical and contemporary works in 1995 on Paganini’s Guarneri del Gesù 1742 violin, the “Canon”.