Trip destroys priceless Stradivarius

[poboy]

Link to had a bad day

Quote:

As a former child prodigy blessed with chiselled good looks, they called him the David Beckham of the classical violin. Now he is more likely to be known as the lad with the broken Strad.

Guess he should have bought a fiddle.

[TromboneAl]

And it was in the case! That's inexcusable -- that case should have been able to handle an elephant stepping on it.

[free4now]

What I can't figure out is why it is going to take them 8 months to repair the Stradivarius? Do they have to build a time machine and send it back to Stradivarius himself?

[youbet]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl And it was in the case! That's inexcusable -- that case should have been able to handle an elephant stepping on it.

"David Garrett, 26, one of the nation's foremost young concert performers, had an accident that every world-class musician must dread: at the end of a concert at the Barbican he tripped and landed on his violin. "


Even tougher than breaking it while in its case must have been playing it while in the case!!

[retire@40]

That just increased the value of all the remaining Strads in the world.

These Strads get destroyed once in a while. Sometimes they can be fixed, sometimes not. Even so, they do get beaten up throughout the years. In fact, the cello used by Yo-Yo Ma that is mentioned in the story is called the Davidov. At one point in it's history that cello was used to play a concert for Napoleon. At that concert, Napoleon wanted to try to play the instrument (who would be able to say no to that request?). When he put it between his legs, his spurs dug into the side of the instrument and those impressions are still visible on the instrument today.

A few decades ago another famous violinist, Ginette Neveu, died in a place crash and when they found her, she was clutching her Strad that was destroyed beyond repair.

[TromboneAl]

"I was all packed up and ready to go when I slipped," Garrett told the Evening Standard. "People said it was as if I'd trodden on a banana skin. I fell down a flight of steps and on to the case. When I opened it, the violin was in pieces."--

[HFWR]

"Yeah, man; I tripped..."

[chinaco]

Opps.

[ERD50]

The fascination with Strads must be 99% 'in their heads'. It makes little sense to me.

Many Strads have been radically modified (necks lengthened, for example) from their original design. Orchestras play with different tunings, most players don't use the original style gut strings anyhow - it just seems apples-and-oranges to me. Kind of like taking a classic sports car, putting in a modern V8 and then talking about how great the original design was.

Science and the Stradivarius - physicsworld.com

Quote:

It is important to recognize that the sound of the great Italian instruments we hear today is very different from the sound they would have made in Stradivari's time. Almost all Cremonese instruments underwent extensive restoration and "improvement" in the 19th century. You need only listen to "authentic" baroque groups, in which most top performers play on fine Italian instruments restored to their former state, to recognize the vast difference in tone quality between these restored originals and "modern" versions of the Cremonese violins.

[retire@40]

This is true. Although one of the finest cellist in the world, Jacqueline du Pre, managed to get ownership of the Davidov cello (a Strad), she soon fell out of love with it saying it was "unplayable" and opted to go with a non-Strad.

Even Yo-Yo Ma remodeled the Davidov to a baroque instrument, probably for the same reason.

Another Strad violin called the "Lipinski" fell out of favor with concert violinists because the sound was below par. It's sitting in a private collector's home now probably not being played at all.

Other Strads are hanging in Museums all over the world. I was fortunate enough to view a complete quartet set in Spain a few years ago. It's too bad they've been silenced in that way.

However, last time I checked, Perlman is still playing one of the greatest of all Strads, the Soil Strad.

[poboy]

I just remembered the famous quote:

Quote:

When you've seen one Stradivarius, you've seen them all.

Inspector Clouseau