June 10, 2025

Luke Hsu tackles a violin players’ Everest…RCMF 2025

“Recently a friend of mine bagged his final Munro, completing the ascent of all 282 mountains in Scotland over 3000 feet. Fitting it all into a busy life, it has taken him 45 years and 2 days. Compress all that into a single evening, and you have some idea of Luke Hsu’s achievement in performing all 24 of Paganini’s Caprices at the Romsey Chamber Music Festival.

I am not equating these feats; nor, of course, was Luke’s achieved in a single evening. In an extended, revealing and ultimately rather moving essay in the Festival Programme, Luke explains how his own Paganini journey since boyhood has been a long, exacting and essentially private one: ‘The Caprices became a major force in keeping me motivated amidst a dark and confusing time … (They) were my consolation throughout the pandemic, and they represent my private sphere.’ Brave, then, to step out of the shadows and play them for an audience: and to play them all from memory – which sounds to me as daunting as tackling the Black Cuillin in fog without a map or compass – was eloquent proof of how completely they have become part of him.

Luke’s excellent notes meant that non-musicians like me could keep abreast of what was happening in each Caprice. Much of it left me open-mouthed, though it was much more than a technical display: Luke seemed able to inhabit each Caprice personally, his sensitive playing revealing pools of cantabile beauty amidst the whitewater thrills. There were passages of real delicacy: the minor-key melody of No.6 haunted by trills like the beating of birds’ wings, turning quietly to the major at the very last moment. There were charmingly witty imitations of other instruments – horns, flutes, bagpipes; there were passages demanding quicksilver agility, Luke’s left hand racing up and down the fingerboard like a hyperactive spider. The final, summatory Caprice was simply phenomenal, with pizzicatos (to isolate a single detail) like hail hitting a windscreen.

At the end we all rose to him in the longest and loudest ovation I can remember. We even had two encores; the first, very fittingly, brought Laura Rickard on the stage with him for one of eight Caprices for two violins by Henryk Wieniawski. What can I say? It was one of that handful of concert experiences which, years later, can make one smile and think ‘I was there’.”

-CHRIS Kettle

Seen and Heard International Review on Luke’s complete 24 Paganini Caprices