The Concertmasters of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra

As the first chair of one of the world’s great orchestras, the LA Phil concertmasters often extend their credits by working on great cinematic scores.

 

The casual fan of orchestral music knows the first-chair violinist, the concertmaster, is the “number one,” the best of the violinists. They are the ones who tune the orchestra before the concert begins, shakes the hand of the conductor, and signal when it’s time for the orchestra to take a bow. It’s a prestigious position and one that comes with a top salary in professional symphony orchestras.

 

Another perk that often comes with the position is the use of fine violins owned by the orchestra. Professional orchestras, such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic acquire fine Italian violins by masters such as Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri. The current concertmaster of the LA Phil has performed on a 1711 Stradivarius violin, “the Kreisler”, and a 1729 Stradivarius violin, the “ex-Jack Benny”, for instance.

 

Globally recognized orchestras naturally have globally recognized concertmasters. Dating back to when the LA Phil was founded, those virtuosos have been (in chronological order):

 

Sylvain Noack (1880-1953) Trained in Amsterdam, Noack was the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s first concert master beginning in 1919, the year the orchestra was founded.

Alfred E. Megerlin (1880-1941) A native of Antwerp, he first served as the concertmaster at the Vlaamse Opera and the New York Philharmonic, next with the Minneapolis Philharmonic, becoming the lead violinist with the LA orchestra in 1926.

Henry Svedrofsky (birth and death unclear) While the records are scarce, what exists mentions Svedrofsky as a conductor of the Standard Symphony Orchestra of Los Angeles from 1941 to 1947 and several other orchestras as well. Concertmasters frequently are conductors as well.

 

Josef Borissoff (1889-1964) The US Library of Congress lists the book, “Foundation for violin technic,” by Borissoff as published by Carl Fischer, Inc. in 1925.He is also credited for being the soloist in the premier in Los Angeles (November 1929) of “Introduction and Rondo Capricciosos” by Camille Saint-Saens (1863).

John Pennington (birth and death unclear) Pennington’s tenure as concertmaster with the “LA Phil,” as it is affectionately known today, came after his time as first violinist with the London String Quartet, San Francisco Symphony, and the Paramount Pictures orchestra. He was the concertmaster with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in its first post-War assemblage in 1946. Archives indicate he performed in Los Angeles under conductor Otto Klemperer in 1937.

 

Bronislaw Gimpel (1911-1979) From a musical family in what is now Lviv, Ukraine, the accomplished violinist came to America in 1937 as the drums of war threatened people who, like him, were of Jewish ancestry.

Sascha Jacobsen (1895-1972) Born in Finland (then a part of Russia), he attended the Julliard School in New York and is credited with making the first complete recording of a Haydn quartet. He was the concertmaster in Los Angeles in the 1950s and played the Red Diamond Stradivarius violin.

Jacques Gasselin (birth and unclear) While officially listed in the list of Los Angeles Philharmonic concertmasters, the record of his life and performances are more Hollywood than Haydn. Working for Decca, Musicraft, Capitol Records, and Columbia, Gasselin worked with Katherine Hepburn in the move “Trigger,” playing a violinist, and recorded with Perry Como, Mel Tormé, and Doris Day, among many others.

 

David Frisina (1912-2000) Frisina was the first US-born and youngest (at age 28) concertmaster in the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He also contributed to 277 movie soundtracks as a studio musician. He held the position for 37 years, until 1973, but continued playing with the orchestra another five years (1978).

Sidney Harth (1926-2011) Harth was concertmaster in four philharmonics (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Louisville), served as a conductor as well, including at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. But perhaps his greatest enduring influence was serving on the faculty at the Yale School of Music for 17 years.

Sidney Weiss (1928) Serving as the LA Philharmonic concertmaster from 1979 through 1994, he also recorded Elgar and Walton violin sonatas, and the Mendelssohn and Haydn Double Concerti with his wife, pianist Jeanne Weiss. Both met while studying music in their native Chicago.

 

Alexander Treger (1948) Assuming the role of concertmaster in Los Angeles in 1985, Treger emigrated from his native Russia in 1973 and began playing with the orchestra in 1974. In one notable concert in 2008, he soloed playing the theme music from Schindler’s List in a concert of composer John Williams’ film music.

Martin Chalifour (1961) As of 2022 Martin Chalifour is in his 25^th season as principal concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The Canadian native previously was the associate concertmaster with the Atlanta Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra. Aside from an impressive list of appointments, concerts, and conducting engagements, it bears noting he began playing at age 4 with the Suzuki method.

So, should a visitor to Los Angeles ask how to get to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the natural response from any concertmaster would be, simply, “practice.”

Types of Medieval Stringed Instruments

 

To understand stringed instruments of the European Middle Ages, it helps to understand medieval music itself.

 

The Medieval Era, roughly 500 CE to 1400 CE, was the time when the Church of Rome was the dominant ruling body and religion. Musically, the Catholic churches engaged people in the great cathedrals and humbler provincial churches with sacred music that was at times drawn from secular, folk melodies. It was characterized by chants, primarily in the monophonic (one voice, no melody) form; polyphonic music came later.

 

Of note, while sacred music was by far the dominant form, it was secular music that might have driven greater creative range, free of the strictures of church liturgy. Secular music allowed for love songs, songs about wine, political satire, drama, and dancing. It also gave rise to new musical instruments.

 

Percussion was part of medieval music (cymbals, frame drums, timbrels), as were wind instruments (recorders, tabor pipes, organs, bladder pipe, bellows pipe, bagpipes). And vocals were the center of the sound. But the variety of stringed instruments of the medieval era – most of which would not be found in a modern catalog of fine stringed instruments for sale – speak to a time of nuanced expression:

 

Citole: Also known by several other names (cetera, chytara, sitole, zitol) it was picked or strummed with an ivory or wood plectrum (pick). The only surviving example is in the British Museum and was made around 1300, however it seems to have been converted into a more violin-like instrument in the 16^th century.

 

Dulcimer: A version of a zither, it involved striking its many strings with “hammers,” with the fretted version (used in later times in Appalachian music) having only three or four strings. A banjo dulcimer has a resonating membrane, as with the banjo.

 

Fiddle-vielle: Played with a bow, this has a longer and deeper oval body than a violin, with three to five gut strings. As its earliest name was the “fidel,” making it easy to see how the more modern word “fiddle” came into being. The instrument was quite popular among troubadours and jongleurs in the medieval era, although it might be derived from the Arabic rebab of an earlier time.

 

Gittern: Also called the guiterre in French, this small gut-stringed and round-backed instrument is considered by scholars to be an ancestor of the modern guitar; along the way the guitarra latina and guitarra morisca were Spanish and Moorish versions thereof. Seen in 13th century art, it seems to have evolved to a flat back by the 16th century. The gittern (giterne) is referenced in medieval literature, including Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

 

Harp: With roots in antiquity (the Judeo-Christian bible has 66 verses that mention harps or lyres), and variations of harps were known in Africa and Asia as well as Europe, it was particularly popular in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. By definition, the harp has multiple strings affixed at an angle to a soundboard. The Celtic harp, commonly seen in Irish iconography, is strongly associated with medieval Gaelic music.

 

Hurdy-gurdy: It might be acceptable to refer to this as the platypus of stringed instruments as it incorporates several disparate pieces. It has a thick body with almost no neck and multiple strings (the number and presence of sympathetic drone strings have changed over time); in place of a bow the strings are stroked with a rosined, rotating wheel operated by a crank, while the player’s fingers from the second hand work a keyboard. And like the duckbilled, semi-aquatic, beaver-tailed, egg-laying mammal, it has survived remarkably into the 21st century, often played as a substitute for bagpipes for its similar sound. Earlier versions were called organistrums.

 

Lute: Defined by its mid-length neck, a deep round back, and a sound hole. Strings are plucked and given pitch via a fingerboard, and as a smaller instrument it has a quiet sound. The progenitor instrument to lutes is the oud, which has a teardrop-shaped body and is derived from the Middle Eastern Islamic and pre-Islamic cultures. The oud made its way to Europe by way of the Iberian Peninsula (Moorish Spain), Provence and French troubadours.

 

Psaltery (Psalterium): Better recognized as a modern zither, it is harp-like in appearance and function, plucked with fingers or a plectrum. Its popularity in the 12th through 15th centuries is evident in its depictions in European manuscripts and paintings as well as sculpture. The psalterium is a cousin with a boxier shape, large, primarily used for drone chords and even considered a “string drum” because its role is primarily to provide rhythm accompaniment.

 

Many of these instruments are still collected and played. Some have evolved into other, more modern versions, and, of course, many are extinct, with the last few behind glass in museums. The good news about those instruments that still do exist? While the modern violin maker focuses primarily on fine violins, violas and cellos, most are willing and able to perform maintenance and restoration work on these old medieval instruments.

The History of the Gibson “ex Huberman” Stradivarius Violin

 

The violin Joshua Bell can’t let out of his sight has twice, and for many years, been in the hands of thieves. Yet it helped save the lives of 1,000 people.

 

The French poet, dramatist, novelist, writer, journalist, and critic Theophile Gautier is credited for birthing the phrase, “All passes, art alone endures.” Technically, it was “enduring” within a longer passage (“All passes, art alone enduring stays to us; the bust outlasts the throne, the coin, Tiberius…”). But a tour of the Louvre, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the concert halls of London, Tokyo, San Francisco and Buenos Aires, the local violin shop, provides ample evidence of the basic sentiment.

 

As does the Gibson “ex-Huberman” Stradivarius violin. Now in the worthy hands of virtuoso Joshua Bell, the violin’s history is perhaps one of the most storied among the few hundred surviving fine Italian violins crafted by Antonio Stradivari of Cremona. It was stolen – twice – and was used to help Jewish musicians escape the Holocaust. Composer Johannes Brahms heard his own composition – the difficult violin Concerto in D Major – played on the instrument and it is said to have brought him to tears.

 

Why tears? Branislov Huberman (1882-1947) played a Brahms (1833-1897) concerto at the age of 14. The composer wept with joy to observe and hear the prodigy’s quality of play and interpretation.

 

That had to have been joyful for Huberman as well, but the acclaimed Jewish-Polish violinist who studied in Berlin, where he met Brahms, experienced much sorrow and ultimately triumph with his Strad.

 

First, there were the thefts. The “Gibson” (named for an earlier owner, George Alfred Gibson, an Englishman) was stolen in 1919 from Huberman’s hotel room in Vienna but recovered due to inept fencing (attempt to sell it) within three days. But in 1936, while Huberman was playing his second violin (a Guarnerius) on stage in New York City’s Carnegie Hall, it was stolen again. The thief, Julian Altman, a Julliard-trained violinist who later played it with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., only confessed to his wife on his deathbed in 1985 that he had the stolen instrument.

 

Huberman died in 1947 and never saw that Strad again. But that fateful concert in Carnegie Hall was part of a much bigger cause that, in many ways, proves true the words of the French poet.

 

Huberman watched the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany with alarm and responded in a way that ultimately saved the lives of about 1,000 European Jews. He did this by creating – with the help of many others, including the Italian anti-fascist conductor Arturo Toscanini and physicist Albert Einstein – the Palestinian Symphony Orchestra (later renamed the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra). Musicians were recruited and auditioned from the European capitals at risk from the impending Holocaust. But they also needed money to buy their freedom, and that of the musicians’ families, so Huberman traveled to New York to raise those funds from concerts and personal connections.

 

The plan worked, and we can assume today that least some of the children, grand children and great grandchildren of those 100 or so musicians make their way through the Brahms concerto.

 

Bell, himself of maternal Jewish lineage, bought the instrument in 2001 from British violinist Norbert Brainin, for $4 million, saving the instrument from a collector (in Germany) who planned to put it in a museum. Bell had another Strad he sold to purchase the ex-Huberman, understanding its provenance and the work of the Polish violinist who saved artists, and, art itself.

 

“I never connected so quickly with an instrument,” says its current owner. “This is my violin. I can’t let it out of my sight.”

Material for Modern Stringed Instrument Bows

 

The smaller of the two parts of stringed instruments, the bow, is remarkably complex and made of several parts, historically derived directly from nature.

 

To understand the parts of the bow used in stringed instruments – in Western music, the violin family (violin, cello, viola, bass, and the viola da gamba) – it helps to understand what is provided by nature. The bows both ancient and modern are an assembly made of animal, vegetable, and mineral origins.

 

But lovers of music also have to acknowledge that this essential component of stringed instruments, the bow, are largely derived from cultures further east than Europe, and from a people who were better known for war and conquest than the music chambers of British, French, and Russian royalty.

 

While stringed instruments that were plucked and strummed by hand go back quite far in time, it wasn’t until around the 10^th century CE that bows are evident in the archaeological and historic records. And there, they were first seen in Egypt, India, Greece and Anatolian civilizations. In all likelihood the stringed bow originated with the horse based-cultures of Central Asia, particularly the traveling Mongolians.

 

The horse component of this history is important and an enduring part of what makes up the bows of today. Synthetic materials are now used, particularly with student violin bows that accompany affordable student violins, but the hairs drawn from white Mongolian Stallions are still the gold standard for stringed instrument bows. Coated in rosin to increase friction, those tightly-set hairs are critical for making sound.

 

But the bow is more than hair. The other materials used for key parts are:

 

Stick: Traditional bows are made of wood. The absolute favored type of wood is Pernambuco; grown in Brazil, it nonetheless is in increasingly short supply due to the species of tree becoming endangered (it grows slowly and has been overharvested or burned). In is place are Brazilwood, Ipe (Tabebuia) and the surprisingly well-received synthetics, carbon fiber and fiberglass.

 

Frog: This is the part that holds the horsehair to the stick. Functional parts are typically ebony, but decorative flourishes made of ivory, tortoiseshell, mother of pearl and abalone shells are applied (the latter of these two considered more sustainable). The frog also has metal components, in ascending order of value starting with nickel silver, silver and gold. The grip portion of the frog is made of silk, wire, or whalebone while the small area where the thumb makes contact with the frog is made of either leather or snakeskin. Believe it or not, ancient mammoth ivory is sometimes used for the tip plate of the bow (evidently there are an estimated 10 million extinct-yet-preserved wooly mammoths emerging from melting permafrost and glaciers), although bone, elephant ivory (discouraged by international law but present on legacy bows), metal and silver are also used.

 

What should be clear is that time and how music is produced do not stand still. The success of carbon fiber bow sticks – some insist they work better performing in outdoor humidity – suggests the future will bring changes that ultimately enable better music.

The Violins of Itzhak Perlman

 

Every fine violin from the Italian luthiers has a story. But in the case of those played by Itzhak Perlman, the life stories of these instruments are bigger.

 

It’s an understatement to say that Itzhak Perlman has a storied career. And it’s erroneous to say that in the past tense – the 76-year-old virtuoso has a full tour schedule for 2022. He began winning competitions as a child prodigy, has performed with some of the greatest orchestras in the world and before Queen Elizabeth, at the 2009 Obama inauguration, and even shared the stage at the 150^th anniversary celebration of Tchaikovsky in Leningrad in 1990 with Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, Isaac Stern, and Pinchas Zukerman.

 

But both Perlman and at least one of his fine Italian violins have stepped off the classical stages and are present in the parts of culture not typically associated with fine stringed instruments. At the age of 23, Perlman performed not once but twice on The Ed Sullivan Show, reaching one of the widest mass audiences possible in 1958. Perlman’s other performances outside of concert halls include playing the American national anthem at Citi Field in New York in 2016, on the Sesame Street children’s television show, and in jazz and klezmer arrangements.

 

Perlman owned and played three of the greatest instruments ever crafted by three renowned makers of fine stringed instruments. They are the Guarneri del Gesu 1743 “Sauret,” the Carlo Bergonzi 1735 “ex-Kreisler,” and the 1714 Soil Stradivarius.

 

It is the Strad that might be among the most famous outside of classical music, but in an entirely unexpected way. It’s well known to gamers who play Fallout 3, the 2008 action role-play game. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, this lone violin is stored (fictionally) in an underground bunker to save it from nuclear holocaust. In real life, its provenance (prior to Perlman) includes renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Viennese collector Oscar Bondy, and the French luthier Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume.

 

The Bergonzi was made in the Cremonese studio in 1735. Named for violinist Fritz Kreisler, it was literally the second fiddle of the Venetian musician as he was forced to “donate” his Guarneri violin to the United States Library of Congress to settle a tax liability. Still, the Kreisler Bergonzi served him the last decade of his performing years, after which it was acquired by Cuban violinist Angel Reyes, who played it before selling it to Perlman. It was since acquired by the concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony, Ruben Gonzales, later to violin collector David Fulton – and since 2006 has been in the possession of Dextra Musica Foundation and played by Guro Kleven Hagen of Norway.

 

The Guarneri del Gesu Sauret remains in Perlman’s possession, even if his Stradivarius is his primary violin. But known for its beauty, with the flames grain ascending from the edges to the center joint, it was featured in a 1994 exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York titled, “The Violin Masterpieces of Guarneri del Gesu.”

 

Perlman survived childhood polio and has his entire life been unable to walk unassisted. Perhaps it was these fine instruments that not only helped him get around, but to fly.

The History of the Nyckelharpa

 

The “Swedish fiddle” is not purely a product of this Scandinavian country. But its biggest fans are probably in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmo and Uppsala.

 

To understand the history of the Nyckelharpa – referred to in some circles as the Swedish fiddle – actually requires digging into the history of all stringed instruments.

 

The Nyckelharpa has existed in one form or another format least 600 years, and is generally considered an instrument of Swedes. Given how Christianity came later to Sweden, its earliest iterations can easily be associated with Norse gods and secular life in the Nordic lands. There were multiple versions of the stringed instrument, as it has evolved over time, to today where it could be mistaken for an instrumental marriage between a bowed instrument (violin, viola, cello, bass) and a keyboard such as a piano, harpsichord or perhaps an accordion.

 

It’s unclear exactly what the earliest versions of Nyckelharpa looked like. There are just three surviving instruments from the 16^th century, but there are earlier depictions of an instrument that resembles the boxy, oblong contraption. Church paintings in Denmark, Sweden and Italy, dating to the early 1400s, and later (about 1590) in a church in Hildesheim, Germany, seem to show the instrument. An even older example in ecclesiastical art dates from about 1350 on a carved relief on a gate into Kallunge Church in Gotland, Sweden, which shows what might be two Nyckelharpa players in what we are to assume is a performance of pre-Reformation sacred music (academics stop short of declaring these to be definitively Nyckelharpa).

 

The physical instrument evolved in various iterations over time, as evidenced by the addition of strings, now in three rows: the three melody strings, a drone C, and 12 resonance (sympathetic) strings, which were the more modern addition (16^th century). The keys, played with the left hand while the right hand bows the strings, serve as frets when a key is depressed. This changes the pitch of the string, similar to what the violinists’ hands do on a violin.

 

Modern use of the Nyckelharpa is still a niche interest, with a concentration of about 10,000 players in Sweden (population 10.3 million), and smatterings of clubs and performers on the folk music scene in the US and elsewhere. The popular rock group Tillian, which often covers work by the Icelandic artist Bjork, frequently uses a Nickelharpa in contemporary arrangements, including on its recently released album Lotus Graveyard.

 

But where exactly did the instrument, which is fairly complex in its construction, come from? The specifics are lost to history, but it begs a bigger topic, which is how stringed instruments are practically universal to humankind. Examples of strings that are variously struck, plucked, or bowed existed on every inhabited continent in the archeological records. Be it a harp, a zither, a lyre, a lute, tambura, via, sitar or sarod (they are technically all referred to as chordaphones), which later gave birth to keyboard instruments (pianos, hurdy-gurdies, clavichords), sounds from the vibration of strings have been understood for millennia. As trade developed between cultures of the East and West, with Africa and eventually the Americas and Australia, types of stringed instruments were discovered and traded just as were spices, fabrics, and ideas.

 

As to the instruments themselves, they’re rare. Only a few luthiers specialize in the making of Nyckelharpas.  You won’t typically find one in the shop of the local violin maker, nor will you likely find one featured in a catalog of fine stringed instruments.

 

The Nyckelharpa, an amalgamation of physics that a skilled musician can play as nimbly as any fiddle, might be considered a smorgasbord unto itself, and perhaps just as rich in musical flavor.

The Violins of Violinist Fritz Kreisler

 

The Austrian-born violinist had many stringed instruments over his long career. And he had fine taste in violins – commensurate with his playing.

 

The career of violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962), while brilliant, is fairly consistent with other European virtuosos of the late 19^th and 20^th centuries. He was discovered to be talented at a young age, he studied under leading teachers at the time (at the Vienna Conservatory and later in Paris), won an early award at age 12 (“Premier Grand Prix de Rome”), toured at age 13 in the United States, and even had a composition written for him (Edward Elgar’s “Violin Concerto”) when he was just 25, which he premiered.

 

Kreisler also had a habit of fooling the critics with pretending some of his own compositions – solos for encores, including “Liebesleid” and “Liebesfreud”– were the work of the likes of Antonio Vivaldi and Gaetano Pugnani. When critics who initially lauded the works complained at his fraud, he responded, “The name changes, the value remains.”

 

It is not unlike times when refined oenophiles declare a wine to be superior in a blind taste test, only to be told they picked the $25 bottle over wines at ten times the price.

 

His mischievous behaviors aside, he had a storied career and left behind many recordings that can be heard today.

 

But what might stand out from his career is the colorful history of his several fine Italian violins – including how he exaggerated which violin makers created them. Some he owned, some he was lent. In short order, the stories of his violins are:

 

Amati – The member of this Cremonese family of violin makers created the three-quarter sized violin is unknown, but it was his award for winning the Austrian State Prize, which he did playing on a half-size violin made by Matthias Thir.

 

Nicolo Gagliano – This was a gift from an architect friend of Kreisler, who described it as “an old, battered violin.” Only when he looked more closely at it did he realize this was a fine instrument from the shop of the Naples-based Gagliano family, who largely worked in the 18^th to mid-19^th centuries.

 

First Stradivari – Kreisler was lent the 1708 Davidov Strad after winning first prize at the Paris Conservatoire, although he never owned it. He received (for keeps) a Gand-Bernadel violin as his prize.

 

Second Stradivari – Kreisler was also lent a Strad, the 1732 Baillot, when he performed the Bruch G minor Concerto in 1898 with the Vienna Philharmonic.

 

Third Stradivari – By 1908 (at age 33), Kreisler acquired the 1726 “Greville” Strad, but he sold it within a year.

 

Fourth (half) Stradivari – The virtuoso acquired the 1733 Stradivarius that now bears his name, the “Huberman, Kreisler.” But it was really only half made by the uber luthier – the scroll was from another maker. He had it retrofitted with a Stradivari-made head a few years later and sold it, with it eventually getting to the ownership of Bronislaw Huberman.

 

Giovanni Grancino – The first “serious” violin that Kreiser played, for eight years, was from his father. The Grancino family of luthiers was based in Milan, working in the 17^th century, and their instruments are the subject of three cultural works of the 20^th century: in the 1957 novel “Spring” (author Emily-Jane Hills Orford); Harold Decker’s novel, “Giulia: The View Through F-Holes;” and in the children’s recording by Canadian performer Peggy Hills, “Peggy’s Violin,” in 2007.

 

Several Guarneris (Pietro, Giuseppe, multiple instruments) – While given or lent many of his instruments, Kreisler actually purchased the 1735 “Mary Portman” Guarneri del Gesu around the age of 25 for $10,000, a princely sum for its time. But four years later, he become enchanted with the sound of the 1734 “Hart” Guarneri (subsequently the “Hart, Kreisler Guaneri”) and managed to pay its owner also $10,000 for it. This is likely the violin on which Kreisler made several recordings in the early 1900s that can be heard today.

 

For a few years he owned the 1732 Guarneri del Gesu, made by the brother Giuseppe, previously played by Ivadar Nachez of Hungary. Among all of Kreisler’s violins, it has the most colorful and dangerous history. It was once owned by a general of Napoleon, Jean-Andoche Junot, who lost it to British pirates, who sold it to a vicar for £2. The vicar made good coin selling it to a collector, William Thomson, it was bought and sold several times and was considered perhaps the finest instrument Kreisler ever owned. It was also the instrument Kreisler’s wife used to test his cognition in a hospital after he had suffered a head injury (he played the Andante of the Mendelssohn Concerto, presumably to the delight of other patients and hospital staff).