Word: strads
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...People who have lost a lot of money in the stock market are scrambling to instruments as safe havens," says Francais. For anyone who owns a Strad, that market stability sounds like sweet music...
...Using the ashes of minute wood samples, Nagyvary analyzed the chemical makeup of violins made by Stradivari and a contemporary Cremonese maker Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, whose violins are thought to be near equals to Strads. The ashes of the Strad's wood contained numerous chemicals - most notably borax and chromium - that suggest it had been aggressively treated with a varnish designed to protect against infestation. The analysis also found that the organic matrix of Stradivari's wood was damaged and weakened, almost certainly by the application of the mineral preservative, leading Nagyvary to speculate that the wood...
...Perhaps. But American concert violinist James Ehnes says that while varnish may be one of the keys to Stradivari's greatness, it can't be the only one, for the simple reason that not all Strads sound the same. Ehnes recently released a DVD, Homage, in which he performed on 12 instruments in the Fulton Collection in Seattle - probably the greatest collection of Stradivari and Guarneri violins in the world. Each Strad had its own voice, he says, although there also existed a "family resemblance" throughout the collection. "When I played these instruments I got the feeling that there were...
...musicians, the debate over what defines the Stradivarius sound and the underlying causes for this uniqueness may soon be academic, as private collectors drive the price beyond their reach. "The era when musicians could afford their own Strad is coming to an end," Ehnes says. The concert violinist Cho-Liang Lin says the Stradivarius he bought for $300,000 25 years ago is probably worth $3 million now. He points to the sale of recently deceased cellist Mstislav Rostropovich's Duport Stradivarius, which trade publications recently put at $20 million. "There's no way even a highly successful young musician...
...perform Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor, a piece of barely restrained mourning that took on added power in the memory of du Pre's playing. "I dedicated the performance to her," my father recalls. "For years after I bought the Strad I could hear Jackie's [artistic] voice when I played, especially when I played Elgar. Perhaps all the hours she spent working on projecting a certain coloring and style minutely warped and changed the wood so that it more readily put forth her particular style. I don't know. But I'm sure of this...