Posted on 03/15/2017 9:56:47 PM PDT by kvanbrunt2
This is an update article about a violin my childhood friend stole from his teacher. it's wapo and totenbergs but geoff has done a nice job reporting this story.
NEW YORK — No two Strads are alike, they say, but the violin that Mira Wang reintroduced to the world Monday night is truly special. It was gone for decades, stolen after a concert in 1980, and its owner, Roman Totenberg, died in 2012 thinking it would never be seen again.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The really sad part for me was that Phil died before Totenburg and could have returned the strad to the old man he stole it from. phil became such an asshole that he couldn’t even bring himself to tell his wife on his death bed to return the strad to Totenberg. my other comment is this: the girl can’t play that violin like he did. we recorded it.
What a story of intrigue and of exquisite music.
However, not more exquisite than what plays in heaven.
And I hope the fellow found the Lord, because then the music from his heart would have beat out that Strad any day.
I will not sign up to view so here is a fiddler playing a Stradivarius .... I think : )
Charlie Daniels Band - Orange Blossom Special
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2fih2p4HMY
he was a role model for evangelism when we were kids. i think he lost it and never came back.
Pretty much what one would expect for a classic, classic violin sound. A lot of other violins are okay but this is like royal purple velvet.
Why can’t a great, great instrument like that one be kept in something like a conservatory for concert use by the greats of contemporary music? It should be singing in as many hands as possible.
And, of course, the subject of study by scientists in an attempt to produce similar instruments today.
That’s a shame. Sometimes the devil can get in someone’s face and they lose their confidence.
sorry but phil was an asshole but he played that violin like a Ferrari. she will never play it that way. i think you can get recordings at amazon under mobius. i still have some of the cd’s i produced. i might put them out there at some point.
sorry but we are under the Harrison Bergeron syndrome today. i wouldn’t give any government trained idiot anything to play with. these people are all cowards. that is how he pulled it off.
I’ve wondered about the science of producing similar ones.
As an engineer I would wonder where it might be possible to produce a violin that has “too much” resonance and then to trim its characteristics down exactly to what it needs to be with strategically fitted sound absorptive material. That way the characteristics of the Strad (or of other classic instruments) might be able to be closely mimicked with one adjustable instrument. Of course then people would say it isn’t a Strad — and no it would not be — but it might get us the closest to a Strad sound that modern technology could do without the endless trial-and-error of building the whole violin.
"...here is a fiddler, playing a Stradivarius..."
There are a lot of privately schooled musicians, and privately schooled scientists. I don’t know where “government trained idiot” even enters the picture.
Actually I wonder if that is similar to how Stradivarius himself did it. First he created a very “live” violin. Then he worked on ways to damp the characteristics of his model down with different finishes, maybe different wood cross sections. It’s easy to remove “liveness” when you have too much. You can’t (at least as easily) add it when you have too little, though bracing might still be possible if the instrument was designed for that.
A modern adjustable model might have a back plate that is easily removed and reinstalled, and places to stick or attach felt, stiffeners, etc.
Would it lack the romance? Yes.
Would it lack the sound? Maybe not.
... Kind of like the violin equivalent of the tuneable Supertrapp baffled mufflers for motorcycles. You get your Harley loud, yet not out of control.
i don’t think the players are here anymore. they are post modern automatons replaced by a robot. these musicians cannot hear the music that was written. let alone play it.
listen to her music and your ears will fall asleep.
Hope springs eternal.
As long as souls are born into the world there are going to be great musicians and they might not even be the most technically virtuosic ones.
People tell me my piano playing has soul, and yet the pianists on You Tube would blow the technical doors off of me any day of the week.
Lets remember the Author of all things beautiful and proceed with that hope. I even think a dedicated violin maker could home in on another very Strad-like model, by fine tuning a prototype that has an excess of the needed characteristics. And everybody would laugh at him when he said he slapped on a finish from Home Depot... but it might be true.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.