Word: strad
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Bended Knee. That examination over, Buswell packed his 1720 Strad and dashed back to Cambridge, Mass., to study for exams at Harvard, where he is a sophomore carrying a full load of classes. Though his 50-city concert tour this season means that he will miss 40% of his classes, he bones up on lectures taped for him by an admiring Radcliffe coed. "I take my books on tour," he says, "but it's like a child sucking his thumb. They comfort me, make me feel virtuous. But I'm always disastrously behind." Nevertheless, he caught up well...
...Neuroses. The two most generous compliments she ever received came anonymously. In 1961, a nameless but extravagant fan contributed enough money to enable her to buy a 1673 Stradivarius now valued at $12,000. Two years ago, another anonymous admirer shelled out $90,000 for Jacqueline's other Strad-the famous "Davidov," once owned by the 19th century Russian cellist Carl Davidov. "The first has an earthy, peasant sound," Jacqueline says. "The Davidov is fine and clear. The extraordinary thing is that the wood still lives after 300 years...
...impossible today to hear the original sound of a Stradivari because every one of these instruments has had its original fittings removed and more than 30 changes made; a modernized Strad does not bear any more resemblance to the sound intended by its maker than a harpsichord to a piano. Also, the excessive pressure of modern fittings is causing cracks, so that we have an ever increasing number of played-out Strads. The only solution to this vandalism: restore the original fittings and make the instruments true baroque violins that will blend with the harpsichord instead of drowning...
...tune. Jascha Heifetz, Leonid Kogan and Isaac Stern like the dark, virile tone of the Guarneri; Zino Francescatti, Yehudi Menuhin and David Oistrakh prefer the lighter, silvery tone of the Stradivari. The Guarneri has the breadth and projection of a contralto, says one camp. Ah, yes, but the Strad has the clarity and finesse of a soprano, counters the other. That Stradivari enjoys a more illustrious reputation, says Heifetz, is because "he had a better pressagent." Actually, claims Jascha, "the Guarneri is a joyous woman, richly experienced in life; the Stradivari is a young, unsophisticated girl...
...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...