Word: cremona
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...string instruments in 300 years. This, however, is not likely to cut much ice with many performers, if only because musicians have a habit of disagreeing on almost every notion concerning their instruments, especially violins. Fiddle players agree on one important fact, however: the finest violins are the Cremona instruments made by Joseph Guarneri del Gesù (1698-1744) and Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737). There are only about 150 Guarneri and 550 Strads still in existence, and they sell today for $30,000 to $100,000. Most violinists cannot afford that kind of money...
...Leonhardt, director of the Mittenwald violin school in Germany. "Delightful as the Stradivari varnish might be to look at," he says, "it hardly contributes anything to the sound." Time, say the experts, is far more important. "A man reaches his prime around 40, a violin at about 100," explains Cremona Luthier Pietro Sgarabotto. Thus many luthiers insist that old violins are better only because they are older, that a century from now the fiddles being made by such modern masters as Sacconi, and Carl Becker Sr. of Chicago, will equal the fabled Strad. That, of course, remains to be heard...
Troubled & Sad. Crisp reminders of everyday reality shocked and estranged his 16th century public; he even got fired midway through work on frescoes for the duomo in Cremona. Today his inventive if taciturn brilliance is earning him increasing admiration. He is recognized more and more as a man of his time, for his canvases, above all, are a commingling of the shifting manners then stirring in the art world...
...Fascist. "I was born in July, the month Mussolini was born," boasts the bungling Blackshirt corporal (Ugo Tog-nazzi), eager for promotion. His father was a blacksmith like Mussolini's, he adds. And he once walked from Cremona to Rome to see il Duce, but missed...
...GLORY OF CREMONA (Decca). For an elaborate and instructive violin lesson, Ruggiero Ricci collected $750,000 worth of great instruments, including six Stradivarii and five Guarnerii. To show their differences, Ricci plays on each the same short phrase from Bruch. To bring out their beauty, he plays on each a different short piece (Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, Paganini, Handel, Brahms). "The more output and resource an instrument has," Ricci says, "the more difficult it is to handle." He proves that he can handle them all, but like Heifetz and Stern, he favors the Guarnerii, capable of more bite and passion than...