Francesca
Dego is an Italian violinist, writer, and teacher born in Lecco, Italy, in
1989. (Lecco is about 20 miles north of
Milan, Italy, and about 10 miles east of Lugano, Switzerland.) She is an ultra-Romantic artist known for her
iconic interpretations of Nicolo Paganini’s music. Her debut album (for Deutsche Gramophone) was
a recording of Paganini’s 24 Caprices, played on the same Guarneri violin which
Ruggiero Ricci used on the very first recording (of the unaccompanied version)
of the Caprices, a Guarneri del Gesu from 1734.
That Guarneri was her instrument for many years. She possesses a very brilliant technique (it
has been described as flawless), but her approach is often an operatic one,
providing dramatic and poetic sensitivity to everything she plays. She has stated that violinists often treat
Paganini’s concertos like showpieces when in fact, they are infused with vocal
drama. As can be expected, she has
toured the world several times and played with every major orchestra. Dego began violin lessons at age 4 with her
father, a writer, journalist, and college professor. For unknown reasons, the family moved to San
Diego, California, when Dego was age 5 and there she studied with Michael
Tseitlin at the Fairbanks School of Performing Arts. It was also there that she made her solo
debut at age 7, playing Bach’s first violin concerto. (A recording or video of that performance may
exist, but it’s not posted on the internet.)
A while later, possibly in 1998, at age 9, the family moved to Milan
where she graduated from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, having there studied
for several years with Daniele Gay, whom she holds in high esteem. She also studied at the Stauffer Academy in
Cremona, the Siena Chigiana Academy (in Siena), and the Royal College of Music
in London. Her teachers have included
Salvatore Accardo, Itzhak Rashkovsky, and Schlomo Mintz. Dego was invited to record on Paganini’s
famous Guarneri violin in 2019. After
Paganini’s death, the violin had never been played for more than a few minutes
at a time until Dego was granted the distinction of recording, in the span of
several days, an entire CD with it. In various
interviews, Dego describes in detail the experience of the recording sessions
with the violin, which included a security team of six people, posted around
her at all times, including during a recital in Venice. Dego’s discography is not yet very extensive
but it includes 15 CDs – two of those CDs are devoted to chamber music (trios
and quartets) and two are devoted to the music of Ferruccio Busoni, including
his violin concerto. She has recorded
the complete Beethoven sonatas on three CDs.
Dego has also championed (and recorded) the violin concerto of Friedrich
Wolf (better known as Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari), a concerto (published in 1944) which
was dedicated to the nearly forgotten violinist Guila Bustabo. Here is a complete recording of the
concerto. Interestingly, Dego has not
commercially recorded the concertos of Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bruch,
Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, or Sibelius, although they have been in her repertoire
for many years - you can, however, find her live recordings of them on YouTube
with different orchestras. She has
recording sessions scheduled for June, 2026, but I don’t know which works she
will be recording. Here is Dego’s
recording of Paganini’s 4th Caprice, considered the most difficult
out of the 24. In addition to being
gifted with the looks of a fashion model (Versace provides gowns for her
performances), she is also a writer, contributing articles to music periodicals
– Strings Magazine, The Strad, Suonare News, and Musical Opinion are among them. She has also written a book titled Tra leNote (Among the Notes) but I don’t know if it has been translated. She is now based in London and plays a
Francesco Ruggeri violin from 1697. Here
is one quote among many: “My dream is to always be able to work with orchestras
and colleagues who inspire me and make it possible to create something special
on stage.”
