Henryk Wieniawski

Contemporaries knew Henryk Wieniawski principally as a dazzling violinist, and it is for his violin music that he's best known today. He was born in Lublin, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire) and there was never any doubt about his skill on the violin – to general astonishment, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at the age of eight. By the age of 13 he was touring Europe and his later career took him from St Petersburg to California. With his brooding expression and dapper goatee and moustache, he cut a dashing figure. But success started to take its toll, and his weight ballooned (the student Tchaikovsky, borrowing Wieniawski's tailcoat for a concert, found it so big as to be unwearable). He collapsed and died of heart failure at the St Petersburg home of Tchaikovsky's patroness Nadezhda von Meck in March 1880, aged only 44. But his legacy continues to challenge and delight violinists: salon music and virtuoso showpieces based on operatic melodies and Polish folk themes; the brooding Légende (c. 1860); and above all his two brilliant, impassioned Violin Concertos (1852 and 1862) which combine virtuoso fireworks with a lyrical, unmistakably Polish sensibility.