When Two Strads Aren't Enough

Well, it was my own damn fault, as it usually is. I had, after all, told Naïa that I was a relentless, an indefatigable, diagrammer of sentences, so I was really on the hook: I had to stop listening to some of the twentieth century’s greatest music and take a look at her three sentences.

She got them right, but couldn’t tell me why, nor what the seven parts of speech are.

“I guessed for most of them,” said Naïa, who has the open frankness of Lady, her mother.

I wanted to interfere further, but her tutor was sitting nearby, and it felt a little intrusive: would my intrusion be construed as silent criticism? But I did have to wonder—what good is doing something correctly if you have no idea why it’s correct?

What would I have done? Well, we could have started with the parts of speech, about which Naïa knew nothing.

“We haven’t gotten to that, yet,” said the tutor.

Hunh?

I didn’t say it, but it makes no sense to be diagramming sentences without knowing the parts of speech—it’s like swimming without water.

Well, it wasn’t my battle, so I went back to the question of Anne Akiko Meyers, the young American violinist who has two Strads and was recently given the use—for the rest of her life—of what’s sometimes called the “Mona Lisa” of violins: the 1741 “Vieuxtemps” Guarneri del Gesu.

The “Vieuxtemps” is unusual on several levels—it’s in fabulous shape, never having been cracked, never having had any extensive work on it. It also has a hefty price tag on it—they were asking 18 million bucks, though it was sold at auction for an undisclosed amount (though the auctioneer did note that it was the highest price ever paid for a violin). Lastly, it spent the last five decades lying under the bed of a rich London banker.

Understandably, Meyers was a happy lady, that day in January of 2013 when she was given the use of the Guarneri. Here’s what she said in her press release:

“I have never heard another violin with such a beautiful spectrum of color,” Anne said of the "Vieuxtemps” Guarneri del Gesu in a press release today. “I am honored and humbled to receive lifetime use of the instrument, and I look forward to taking the violin to audiences all over the world.”

Just as understandably, some people wondered what would be happening to the two Stradivarius violins that Meyers owns—would she be playing them, or would they be sitting at home, in their cases? And was it really fair…

It has to be said: not all in the world of classical music is quite as harmonious as the music that gets played. And though cellists are reputedly the nastiest of all instrumentalists, the violinists are no pikers, either. Here’s a sample of the comments on violinist.com:

I’m starting to think this is all a publicity stunt by Anne Meyers. I was told by a reliable source that she has a rich funder who purchased the Molitor strad for her. And now this Guarneri del Gesu too ?? If I was a private collector who owned the Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesu. [Sic.] Anne Meyers would NOT be the first artist that comes to my mind.

Whatever the merits of having two Strads and a Guarneri may be, there’s no question that the violin is better off than are many famous, and perhaps equally good, violins that are either in museums or—worse—being held by investors in a vault. Here’s what Time magazine had to say in 2009, at the pit of the recession:

Facing volatile equity markets, investors often look to gold and silver. But an updated study of classical-instrument valuations by Brandeis economist Kathryn Graddy shows that violins may be among the most stable of investments. Graddy's data indicate that between 1850 and April of this year, the value of professional-quality instruments rose in real terms (i.e., after inflation) about 3% annually. High-end violins have appreciated at much higher rates — particularly rare instruments made by Italian masters like Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri del Gesù.

There is, in fact, some good news in this gloomy picture. The first is that, at least in some double-blind tests (where neither player nor listener knew what they were playing or hearing), modern instruments were chosen above Strads or Guarneris for sound. So as glorious as a Strad may be, it’s not the only fiddle in the world.

Lastly, any reader out there with a million pounds lying about used might consider contacting Florian Leonhard, a London-based violin restorer who has made a specialty of authenticating old Italian instruments, advising institutions with money on the instrument, and then acting as a matchmaker between the musician and the institution. Here’s a description:

In addition to the pursuit of capital appreciation, the fund intends to loan the violins to young, up-and-coming musicians who are priced out of the market. The goal is to help exceptional musicians reach their full artistic potential and optimise the quality of classical performance at the highest level. This philanthropic enterprise will separate the fund from museums and institutions which kept fine instruments from the marketplace.

Be sure to tell them I sent you!