Word: stradivaris
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...Antonio Stradivari, one of the greatest craftsmen the world has known, would shudder if he were to read what follows. It concerns a cello he made three centuries ago, in 1701, that today some musicians consider the best in the world. It is named after one of its various owners, Adrien-François Servais, and for the past 20 years has been kept in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington. Occasionally a musician of renown is allowed to play the Servais: in 1992 Dutchman Anner Bylsma made a beautiful recording of Bach...
...Servais exemplifies this intangible value we call individuality. Stradivari's cello found its way into the possession of the Russian court. There Servais, a young Belgian musician, contrived to play it before Czar Nicholas I. The Princess Yusupova, the story goes, had fallen for Servais in a big way and lent him the Stradivarius. The Czar praised the performance, and the Belgian modestly replied that it was surely due to the loan of the great cello. Whereupon the enamored princess exclaimed: "Oh, it wasn't a loan, it was a gift!" The Czar's court was said to be distinctly...
Ptashne says he even tried to convince then-president Derek C. Bok to have the University loan him money to purchase an early Stradivari violin, widely regarded as the best instruments in the world...
...because the years as such do not mean anything, but with the cello, not a day passes that I do not look for something new. I have played it for 58 years, and it is still full of surprises, full of adventures. Mine was made by Stradivari more than 250 years ago, but it stays forever young. How marvelously preserved it is! How beautiful it sounds...
...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...