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RE: Stradivarius? You'd be better off with a modern violin
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Erik van Goch
Posts: 1787
Joined: Jul. 17 2012
From: Netherlands
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 RE: Stradivarius? You'd be better of... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Paul Magnussen
In my book, Picasso had the right attitude: apparently, people used to show him paintings attributed to him in his younger days and ask if they were genuine.
If he liked the painting, he would say it was genuine, and if not, that it wasn’t — regardless of the actual state of affairs.
Don't you just love him :-).
In the Netherlands quite recently 7 paintings were stolen from the Rotterdam Kunsthal, including a Picasso. I'm pretty sure they were fake as hell and the whole thing was a conspiracy of the owner and the museum to collect the insurance money. The paintings were part of a huge collection that was recently inherited and i suspect the new owner and one of his museum connections discovered a couple of paintings (maybe shamefully hidden by the previous owner) that were at least dubious. Offering them for auction would be risky because the resulting exposure could question their quality/identity which could discredit the whole collection. So in stead of running the risk of auction i guess they decided to dump them in a more creative way. So they were temporary exposed in the museum were they were stolen in a shockingly simple way (at first it looked the museum had forgotten to lock the backdoor but they later explained a false fire alarm automatically unlocked the doors, being part of fire/insurance regulations). As a result the thieves could open the door from the outside using a simple credit cart and within minutes the selected paintings were gone, like they had been standing near the door packed and ready to be taken. The next day i saw the paintings in the newspapers, immediately smelled a rat and came up with above scenario. Who would question the originality of works exposed at a museum? On top a museum insurance is more likely to pay good money then a private insurance. All they had to do was burn the paintings asap. When the romanian thieves were caught they indeed claimed the paintings were burned. Wouldn't it be nice if they secretly kept the paintings in stead of burning them as agreed.... then 1 day they might show up, proving my case :-).
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Date Apr. 11 2014 1:16:20
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estebanana
Posts: 9358
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Stradivarius? You'd be better of... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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Well, I'll tell you what, after reading this thread, no comment, but I'd take a Stradivari cello any day over a modern instrument, given a few to choose from. And any sane person would too.
Many makers today are doing great work and a few have made instruments on a consistent basis that are as good as older Italian instruments. But when it comes to tests you have to be fair to all periods of instruments and bear in mind different soloists value different qualities.
You have to ask yourself, which five Strads were available vs. which modern instruments by certain makers ?- and which soloist was playing them? Then understand that a certain soloist will have preferences for different ways the violin handles and sounds.
Have a listening session with five great soloists and 20 Strads and 20 modern instruments and have them rate all the instruments. Compare the results between several soloists and see which instruments are consistent at rating in the top of the field.
In other words, just because one or two soloists prefer a certain sound does not mean Strads are not as good. The organizers of the test could have picked a soloist who they know to like certain kinds of instruments and set them up to feel that way. The other thing is when you play a great violin or cello you may not know in three minutes how to play it to get it to reveal itself. Even great concert artists know this and take time to learn how to play a particular Strad or whatever name. Case in point Yo Yo Ma's cello the that as previously the instrument of Jacqueline du Pre- the Davidoff Strad cello. He has remarked that it took him some time to understand who to coax out the sound.
If it were me, yeah, I'd take the Strad in a millisecond. A few modern makers have challenged the standard, but Strad set the standard, for a really good reason.
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Date Apr. 11 2014 13:09:59
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C. Vega
Posts: 379
Joined: Jan. 16 2004
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RE: Stradivarius? You'd be better of... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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What most of these tests, comparisons or whatever you want to call them rarely, if ever, take into account is the simple fact that every Stradivari instrument that is in current use and nearly every one stashed away in museum and private collections has been heavily modified over the years to the point where sonically they bear little resemblance to the way they sounded when they were made.
There is only one existing Stradivari instrument of the 600 or so (depending on who you ask) that remain, a very large viola that resides in a museum in Italy, that has remained largely original.
The necks have been lengthened and angled back, bass bars have been enlarged and replaced numerous times in some cases, they sport taller bridges, longer fingerboards with more of an arch, a different type of tailpiece and use considerably higher tension strings. Many of them have also been regraduated.
And lets not forget about repairs. I remember seeing some photos of the inside of a very famous Strad violin known as "The Viotti", named for a famous player who once owned it. The inside of the top was a virtual textbook of violin repair techniques. There were numerous crack repair cleats, several large patched areas that required removal of a considerable amount of original wood and in a couple of places there were patches on top of patches. There was also considerable "edge doubling" done to replace wood that was lost due to numerous top removals over the years. I would estimate that 35-40% of the wood in the top was not original. The repairs were masterfully executed and barely visible from the outside. It kinda makes one wonder how much of "that sound" is due to good ol' Tony Strad and how much is due to the skilled modifications and repairs.
FWIW, the last time "The Viotti" changed hands it sold for over $10 million U.S.
A number of years ago the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York took one of the Strads from their collection, a decent enough example but one with no hoity-toity provenance, that had undergone modernizing and had it "built back" to something close to it's original specs by a highly skilled Swiss violin maker. The results were decidedly less than impressive. Rather than subject the fiddle to even more surgery, the museum curators wisely decided to leave well enough alone and it remains in the "old" configuration.
This example serves to show that not every Strad is a sonic masterpiece. Only a relatively small percentage of those that still exist are used regularly and of those that are an equally small percentage of them are considered, by "those in the know", to be top end soloist instruments.
In Stradivari's lifetime many players preferred the older style more highly arched violins of makers like Stainer and Amati but these instruments did not fare as well when the modernizing began in the early 19th century whereas the Strad and later Guarneri style of instruments responded well to them. This is most likely a big part of all the hoopla. Many modern players who specialize in baroque and other early styles tend to favor the more highly arched and mellower sounding older style fiddles as well.
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Date Apr. 11 2014 13:55:34
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timoteo
Posts: 219
Joined: Jun. 22 2012
From: Seattle, USA
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RE: Stradivarius? You'd be better of... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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quote:
quote:
Most of you have probably heard the story of Joshua Bell playing Bach in the subway on his Stradavarius. But for those of you who haven't, I think it's apropos:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html
“In Boston, as [Joshua Bell] performed Max Bruch's dour Violin Concerto in G Minor…”
Confirmation, as if any were needed, that Washington Post writers are frequently indistinguishable from cultureless oafs.
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Paul Magnussen
So let me get this straight: You just read a 7000+ word article about what happened when the author arranged for a world-class musician to busk in the D.C. subway with his multi-million dollar instrument, and your only reaction is to malign the author and the newspaper because of one word from a sentence that was in no way related to the central theme of the article? (At least I assume the word "dour" is what you're objecting to.)
That seems very petty of you Paul. Even if you do disagree with his characterization of Bruch's concerto, why go out of your way to pick a fight over filler material? Is it not conceivable that someone has an opinion about that concerto which is different than yours? I personally find the concerto not unpleasant, but what do I know, I'm also a culturless oaf. Regardless, I found the article to be an interesting demonstration of how context influences our opinions of value, which is what I thought we were talking about in this thread.
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Date Apr. 11 2014 22:28:50
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estebanana
Posts: 9358
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Stradivarius? You'd be better of... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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Look, it makes no difference if Strads & Guarneri's are opened up and changed over the years, the modern instruments that are made are based on them.
Here's the important thing to bear in mind, there is something intrinsic to the Cremonese method of construction that defies change from the being repaired or renecked (modernized. ) The modern copies, and they are usually copies or closely based on Strads et al are also modernized.
I can give you list longer than anyone on the this Foro of Italian violins, violas and celli I've held and played, but I'll spare you the name dropping.
Here's the deal: Tests are all subjective in some way, the best Strads and the Guarneri del Gesus may not have been in that the room,because the best of the best are concert violins on tour or held by concertmasters who are busy working.
The woman doing the playing also was hearing the violin under her ear and she was at the end of her loan period on her Strad, she may have shopping for a new fiddle, so she was looking for certain things and used to hearing a particular Strad under her ear. I've been with good world class players when they select instruments and they take a lot of time to try them and they put them down an try them again. They ask someone else to play it and stand back 5 feet, 10 feet, 20 feet and they evaluate. They consider modern and vintage instruments and often times if they can afford it they will go with a vintage instrument.
Concert artists also play high profile instruments, because well someone has to so it may as well be Yo Yo Ma who has Strad and not the kid done the block. Take the cellist David Finckel, he was the cellist of the Emerson Quartet until he retired to work solo with his wife Wu Han the pianist. Finckel is big advocate of playing modern instruments, but I've never heard him say stupid things about about those who play old masters instruments, like "They only play them for the prestige." Because this clearly is not true. People play older instruments because they are good.
Take Jacquline du Pre, she played the Davidoff cello for about five years, but her playing style changed and the Davidioff no longer suited her, so she was playing on a modern cello at the end of her career because it suited what she was doing. She still kept the Strad cello before it was sold to YoYo Ma, and he kept his Montagnana cello.
The point is great players grab the instrument that suits what they are trying to accomplish at the time. If they can acquire a great old master instrument that suits them they will. If not they will go with a modern instrument that suits them. They may even want to need to change instruments for a particular piece of music because it is better on that fiddle or cello in the way they play it. There are many, many considerations for choosing modern or antique, but to say they simply pick older because of the name or the cache' of having a violin by an old master is really not a major consideration. They want them because they are great instruments.
The argument that new is better or old is better is not really important and sound testing is always subjective in some respect.
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Apr. 11 2014 23:07:23
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