BULL FIDDLIN':

Charlie Siem: Tiny Desk Concert (Tom Huizenga, 6/15/11, NPR)

When he was 3, Siem heard the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin play Beethoven's Violin Concerto. That was all it took to inspire him to pursue the violin. Siem studied at Eton and the Royal College of Music, and now he plays one of Menuhin's old violins — a stunning 1735 Guarneri del Gesu.

As it turns out, fiddling runs in the family. Siem recently discovered that he's related to the 19th-century Norwegian violin virtuoso and composer Ole Bull. Fittingly, Siem started off his Tiny Desk show with Bull's bucolic Cantabile. But then the fireworks began. Paganini's Variations on "Nel Cor Piu" (an aria from a now-forgotten Paisiello opera), contains a grab bag full of violin special effects. Watch Siem as he tosses off the left-hand pizzicato, double-stop harmonics and spiccato bowing as if he were buttering bread. I'm confident that many of my colleagues gathered to hear Siem had never witnessed playing on that level. I saw a few jaws tilted toward the floor.

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