Word: instruments
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...lost. Then again, only two hours before, he'd played the most exciting performance of Rachmaninoff's famously challenging Piano Concerto No. 3 I'd ever attended. So he could be forgiven for letting his football skills dip. Lang Lang is already a veteran. He's been studying his instrument since joining the Liaoning-based Shenyang Conservatory of Music at the age of 3, made his professional debut at 13, and grabbed attention in America in 1999, when his last-minute substitution in "Gala of the Century" in Ravinia with the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 brought the audience...
There are, Gliga says, 200 steps involved in producing high-quality violins. Apart from the initial millwork, Gliga violins are handmade with tools often fashioned by the artisans themselves for the delicate shaping and carving of the instrument. Using teams of three or four people, each specialized in one step of the process, the Gliga factory can maximize its output while maintaining high quality. That teamwork is a variation on the accepted manufacturing theme: purists argue that the finest instruments are those made entirely by one master. Gliga says several people working together actually add to a violin's character...
...Vasile Gliga a keen and experienced eye. "When I see a log, I automatically know how many violins I can get out of it," he says. Each stack of spruce or maple is tagged with details of the year it was cut and the specific part of the instrument in which it will be used. Wood is aged up to six years. As with fine wines, the final product achieves depth and flavor with maturity...
Vasile Gliga has come a long way since his first, illicit foray into business. While employed by Reghin's state-owned violin factory in the 1980s, he secretly made an instrument for himself at home. In 1990, following the Romanian revolution, he sold it to a dealer in the West. The $2,000 price, an undreamed-of fortune, not only bought him a secondhand auto, it also prompted a decision. Frustrated by what he calls the "old-style communist-worker mentality" ingrained in his factory colleagues, he quit his job, calculating that he and his wife, working from home, could...
There's still a snob factor associated with violins, says Naomi Sadler, editor of the British magazine The Strad. "It's true that old Italian instruments are lovely, but some of the top makers today are also producing incredibly good instruments," she says. While most of the best players will use only an original Cremonese masterpiece, at least one world-famous violinist was impressed by a Gliga instrument. In a 1995 letter to Gliga, Yehudi Menuhin wrote, "Dear and very fine craftsman ... I shall treasure the instrument you made ..." At his headquarters in Reghin, Gliga displays the Menuhin letter with...