Some news about the Festival 

The Festival was born in July 2002 with three concerts performed in Carro and is characterized by taking place in many villages of the Val di Vara, an area of great scenic beauty, as well as in well-known tourist destinations on the Riviera, such as Bonassola, Levanto and Framura.

In Carro, the town of origin of Niccolò Paganini’s ancestors, three concerts are performed every year: the inaugural concert, the second at the end of July, and the final concert. They remain the main reference of the Festival.

Organized by the Society of Concerts, the Festival is supported by the MIC, the Liguria
Region, the Carispezia Foundation, by the municipalities participating in the initiative, and by the Association Amici (Friends) of the Festival Paganiniano of Carro.

In 2018, the year dedicated by the European Union to Cultural Heritage, the European Paganini Route was created, that is to say a set of initiatives – concerts, conferences, masterclasses, multimedia platform, videos – dedicated to Niccolò Paganini (Genoa, 1782 – Nice 1849), which retrace the long tour, which began 190 years ago, in 1828, by the violinist par excellence, whose natural gifts and innovative style have left a profound mark up to the present day.

On this occasion, six Paganini days were organized, in collaboration with the Italian Embassies and Institutes of culture abroad, in the European cities where the Genoese violinist performed: in Munich, in Prague, in Vienna, in Warsaw (23rd of May), and in Nice and Marseille.

The project conceived, promoted and coordinated by Armes Progetti, was born from the collaboration between the Society of Concerts of La Spezia, from whose territory, in the municipality of Carro, Niccolò Paganini’s family originated, the Association Amici of Niccolò Paganini of Genoa, the city where the violinist was born, and the Parma Concerts Society, where the violinist died, which every year organize the three most important festivals dedicated to the great musician: Niccolò Paganini Guitar Festival (May, in Parma), Festival Paganiniano of Carro (July and August, in Carro, La Spezia) and Paganini Genova Festival (October, in Genoa).

The artistic director of the Festival Paganiniano of Carro is Bruno Fiorentini.

The protagonists

Previous editions of the Festival have seen the participation of internationally renowned musicians including:

Salvatore Accardo, Uto Ughi, Viktoria Mullova, I Solisti Veneti, Sergej Krylov, Pavel Vernikov, Bruno Canino, I Solisti dei Berliner Philarmoniker, gli Archi della Scala, I Solisti Veneti, il Quartetto di Fiesole, Marco Rizzi, Philippe Graffin, Alirio Diaz, Giovanni Angeleri, Valeriy Sokolov, Massimo Quarta, Cristiano Rossi, Stefano Pagliani, Maxence Larrieu, il Talich Quartet, la Camerata del Concertgebouw di Amsterdam, Paolo Restani, Domenico Nordio, Franco Maggio Ormezowsky, Andrea Tacchi, Alessandro Milani and Filomena Moretti, and regularly the cycle hosts the winner of the last edition of the Paganini Award in Genoa: Juki Manuela Yanke in 2005, Natalia Lomeiko, Feng Ning, Mengla Huang, the finalist Francesca Dego, Sean Lee, Dami Kim, Stefan Tarara and Giuseppe Gibboni.

The public

In recent years the event has enjoyed a great number of visitors not only from the neighboring towns of the valley, but also from the entire Gulf of Tigullio, Versilia and Genoa. This has encouraged numerous tourists to do the same in the Summer period, both Italian as well as foreigners especially from northern Europe. 

In 2011, the President of the Republic awarded the festival with a plaque to mark the cultural value of the event and to celebrate the tenth edition.

In 2013, the Festival was was premiered in the chambers of the Italian Stock Exchange in Milan to mark twenty years of activity and the tenth anniversary of the listing of ISAGRO SpA, the main sponsor of the event. A midnight concert was performed by pianist Restani accompanied by the String Quartet of the Scala.

Artistic Director: Bruno Fiorentini