[MLUG - DISCUSSION] Paganini Caprice #24; Chinese girls playing guitar

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Google Video gives young musicians (I'm mostly interested in guitarists) a 
nice way of showing off their talents to the world.  I just ran across a 
video of a Chinese girl (or maybe young woman) playing Nicolo Paganini's 
Caprice #24 on the guitar.  This caprice is a theme followed by 11 
variations.  It is a very difficult violin piece.  Here's a video of the 
great Jascha Heifetz playing it with piano accompaniment (I also have an 
Itzhak Perlman solo version):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJymvZiEFeo&search=caprice

This is the violin music:

http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/~mbmiller/misc/Paganini%20-%20Caprice%2024%20-%20violin.pdf

Someone has arranged it beautifully for guitar (I'd like to get my hands 
on the sheet music for that but haven't found it yet), and this Chinese 
girl does an amazing job playing it:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1994835504362469704&q=guitar

She makes no obvious mistakes and her tone is excellent (the audio has 
better quality than the video).  It is a real pleasure to watch her play. 
I guess this is her:

http://www.classicalguitar.nl/ViewArticle.aspx?ItemTypeID=6&ArticleID=600

I don't know when the video was recorded, but today she is 25 years old. 
For comparison, here's someone who isn't quite so good playing it on a 
lesser guitar with poorer recording equipment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3GxNOeMTCo&mode=related&search=caprice


It looks like some Chinese girls are learning to play rock guitar:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3671728188155490115&q=guitar

For some reason, American girls aren't learning to do that, at least not 
that well.  Why not?

Mike

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