Robert Schumann was among the first to transcribe them for piano, followed by Franz Liszt, who sought to translate Paganini's "violinistic sorcery" into a new era of keyboard acrobatics.

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s famous transcription, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini , was so technically demanding that the composer reportedly suffered from performance jitters. Legend says he drank a glass of crème de menthe to steady his nerves before the premiere, leading the press to jokingly dub it the "Crème de Menthe Variations". Legacy Beyond the Violin

The Caprices were so influential that they sparked a transformation in piano technique during the Romantic era.

The transcriptions have since expanded far beyond classical instruments: