14 September 2011

First person to play "Flight Of The Bumblebee" in less than 1 minute

Ben Lee of the rock violin duo Fuse is the world's fastest violin player, "the Usain Bolt of the violin world," and has insured his hands for the equivalent of more than RM13 million.



He is the first person in history to play the piece with which virtuosity is measured, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" (1899-1900) in less than 60 seconds.

Thus, he became the first human to break the "magic-minute" barrier which was widely considered by many experts to be virtually impossible.

That piece is instantly recognisable by its frantic pace when played up to tempo, with nearly uninterrupted runs of chromatic sixteenth notes. It is not so much the pitch or range of the notes that are played that challenges the musician, but simply the musician's ability to move to them quickly enough; because of this and its complexity, it requires a great deal of skill to perform, including the technically demanding "sautille" bowing style.

He did it in November 2010 and clocked in at an astonishing 58.515 seconds, playing on the world's most expensive electric violin, a Swarovski Crystal Bridge violin, worth more than RM4.5 million.

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