Word: stradivarii
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...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...
Good string quartets are about as rare in the U.S. as quadruplets. Last week in Berkeley, Calif, a new one took the air. The Paganini Quartet (so named because their cello, viola, and two violins are Stradivarii once owned by the great violinist, Niccolo Paganini) played Beethoven and Debussy at a brisker than usual clip, but the music was warm and dramatic. Wrote the San Francisco Chronicle's critic, Alfred Frankenstein: "Perhaps never before has one heard a string quartet with so rich, mellow and superbly polished a tone...
...Paganini has a liberal patron. She is Mrs. William Andrews Clark, widow of the copper-millionaire Senator from Montana. First she engaged Scottish-born Violinist Henri Temianka and Belgian Cellist Robert Maas, then she sent to Brussels for Violist Robert Courte and Violinist Gustave Rosseels. She bought the four Stradivarii, which are insured for $250,000, from a New York dealer. Patroness Clark's quartet has already signed for a Beethoven series at the Library of Congress, and for the opening November concert in Manhattan...
...fact everybody has a fine time except the Mongoose, a snaky rat who gets pushed around because his technique is bad. The threat of a sequel to the sequel, presumably called "Brother Rat and Two Babies," looms unpleasantly as the "plot" (replete with faked telegrams, wrecked Rolls Royces, and Stradivarii) reaches its involved conclusion...
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