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).

The Story on Aluminum Violins, Violas and Cellos

 

Here’s to thinking outside of the (string peg) box. But from a 21^st century perspective, covering the aluminum with faux wood was a poor aesthetic choice.

 

Perhaps one of the more curious aspects of musical expression is the unfettered creativity of instrument makers. It began with plucking strings stretched across the hard shell of gourds that, arguably, led to Stradivarius violins and electric guitars.

 

So it was a natural part of violin construction that in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries a number of instrument manufacturers turned to aluminum to replace wood in violins, violas, cellos and string basses. It’s fair to note the material never went beyond a niche following, never adopted by the great virtuosos, and never achieved great value (from a recent check on eBay the highest price found was $5,000 for each of two in a collection). Furthermore, the renowned violin makers crafting fine stringed instruments stuck to crafting them from wood in their storied violin shops.

 

The first American patent for aluminum violins was issued in 1891 to Alfred Springer in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was made by machine, using aluminum for the body but wood for the neck and fittings. Other companies (operating around the same time, evidently without patents) made aluminum violins, guitars, mandolins, fiddles, banjos and zithers: they were the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA, distributed by the Aluminum Musical Instrument Company), C.W. Hutchins Manufacturing Company, Barrows Music Company, and luthier (handmade violinmaker) Edgar l’Allemand of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  This was all at the same time that aluminum horns as amplification devices were attached to “phonofiddles,” making the violin an imitation of the newly devised and wildly popular Victrola phonographs.

 

Of course, there was a difference in the sound quality – wood and aluminum vibrate differently – so what was the motivation for using aluminum? Getting beyond creative experimentation, it had to do with resiliency and eventually, cost. The delicate nature of wood, its temperamental reaction to humidity, and maintenance were initial considerations. Later, during the economic disruptions of world war and the Great Depression, wood was in shorter supply. For a time it was considered supporting the war effort to forgo wood for aluminum, the latter of which is plentiful in nature.

 

Cellos, violas and the double basses were also made of aluminum. In fact, the use of the metallic material in these instruments was particularly advantageous because larger instruments otherwise required more wood.

 

Many of the earlier models had a faux-wood surface applied to them to give them the appearance of being made of wood. This ersatz treatment gives testimony to the fact that the makers and players wanted to use real wood instruments. In more modern applications, the high gloss shine of metal fits a punk (or steampunk) aesthetic that takes, intentionally, the instrument and its music far away from a Bartok violin concerto.

 

Some of the 1930s aluminum violins also incorporated Bakelite, the miracle synthetic of that era that was exceptionally popular in household items and industrial applications. Again, kudos to the creativity of musical instrument makers who look past tradition to identify new ways to make old things. Aluminum might have been the material choice 100 years ago – and there’s no telling what it will be 100 years from now.

Francois Tourte: Inventor of the Modern Bow

 

While considered subservient to the violin, the bow rose to much greater importance in the confluence of Tourte, skilled violinists, and the French Revolution.

 

Frenchman Francois Tourte is widely credited with inventing the modern violin bow, in almost universal use today by violinists of all levels of ability. But given he worked about 200 years ago (he lived from 1747 till 1835) – while fine stringed instruments existed before that, including those of the master Stradivarius, who produced his violins, cellos, and bass instruments in the 17^th and 18^th centuries – it begs the question: what came before the Tourte bows?

 

It turns out there were different versions of bows, largely used for different styles of music. According to a scholarly article on Prism/Scholarslab, a crowdsourcing interpretation website for educators, a shorter version bow (considered French) was used for dances and other social events; this style had short musical phrasing, therefore the bow was made for that. Italians preferred a longer bow fit for longer melodic lines, such as you might hear in a sonata; the Italian composers’ sonata da chiesa genre, with largo preludes and an allegro finale, would be a good application of the longer Italian bow.

 

Tourte standardized the length of the bow, to 74 to 75 centimeters. But the changes he brought about did not end there. He used more wood in the tip, a heavier frog for balance, and he introduced the spreader block. This latter innovation creates a flat ribbon with the bow hair. The screw and the end of the bow moderates the hair tension.

 

Another Tourte innovation was to use Brazilian pernambuco wood. This type of wood, when exposed to heat, can be bent to the optimal shape for bowing a stringed instrument. Previous bows where made by carving wood to the shape rather than a bent-wood process. And the Tourte bow was bent in the opposite direction than its predecessors, a concave dip that tightens and extends when pressed downward.

 

To be fair, it is believed that Tourte was coalescing various bow components seen in the works of other luthiers and archetiers (bow makers) at the time. But from a musical point of view, he opened up a whole new world for players. Today fine stringed instrument bows crafted by Tourte himself can be found for sale at higher-end violin shops.

 

An historical anecdote (i.e., not confirmed with scholarly evidence) is that the famed late 18^th century violinist, G.B. Viotti was friendly with Tourte. Viotti’s playing reportedly placed demands on the bow that only a Tourte bow could deliver.

 

Another historical footnote, which might explain why the Tourte bow achieved universal popularity: The French Revolution of 1789 dissolved the courts of the French aristocracy. Having lost their patrons, the violinists of the day fled the country and went on tour to earn a living. Composers that included Beethoven saw those performers and began writing music for violinists who had a broader range – all thanks to the Tourte bow.

The Violins of Nathan Milstein

 

The Ukranian-American virtuoso played four priceless instruments in his career. But one Strad was his favorite, and he renamed it for his wife.

 

The virtuoso violinist Nathan Mironovich Milstein (1903-1992) had a remarkable career by many indicators – his training, his colleagues, his interpretations of works from the Romantic period, and his own life journey from the Ukraine to America during a tumultuous era. Among his many distinctions is the fact he performed in concert up to the age of 82, ending there only because of a debilitating injury to his hand from a fall.

 

So it might make sense that over his long tenure, he was known to play on at least four exceptionally fine violins, three made by Antonio Stradivari and the fourth by Stradivari’s contemporary, Bartolomeo Guarneri. Milstein also had a favorite bow, now known as the “Milstein” Francois Tourte, made in Paris around 1812.

 

But it bears noting that he owned two of the Strads while the third (the 1717 Reiffenberg) and the Guarneri (the 1727 “Milstein Guarneri ‘del Gesu’”) were borrowed. This is increasingly the case with the most prized (and highly valued) violins today in that the musician merely has them on loan from a wealthy collector or an institution that actually owns the instrument. This is sometimes true of very fine stringed instrument bows.

 

This is not an entirely new phenomenon. One prolific collector of Stradivarius and Guarneri violins (as well as fine instruments by other makers) was Rembert Wurlitzer (1904-1963), the heir of the Wurlitzer Co. fortune who separated himself from the musical instrument and jukebox company to buy, authenticate, restore and sell about half of the known 600 Strads in the 1950s. A Wurlitzer certification is highly respected in contemporary authentications.

 

Wurlitzer owned the Reiffenberg violin, although whether that ownership coincided with Milstein playing it is difficult to determine by available records. Milstein’s most prized instrument, the 1716 “Goldman” Strad, was so named as it was owned by collector Henry Goldman, a scion of the family that founded the Goldman Sachs investment banking firm. Milstein considered that his primary instrument through much of his career and renamed it the “Maria Teresa,” to honor both his wife and his daughter who are so named.

 

The Reiffenberg violin is a rarity in that it retains its original label (“Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis Faciebat Anno 1717”). Labels that say Stradivarius more typically are made by someone else, simply indicating it’s “in the style of” and are of much lower value. It has been owned by Dmitry Sitkovetsky, a Azerbaijan-born classical violinist and conductor, since 1983.

 

Goldman owned the 1716 Strad from 1911-1923, and it changed hands three times before Millstein acquired it in 1945. After Milstein’s death, the family retained ownership until 2006 before selling it to Los Angeles-based businessman Jerry Kohl, a music lover who lends the instrument to players of distinction.

"The Violin Makers of the United States" by Thomas Wenberg

Neither a musician nor a maker of musical instruments, this deeply shy writer traversed America to meet luthiers face-to-face and describe their work.

It was published more than 30 years ago, and all copies sit within a fine Moroccan goatskin cover. It’s available through the standard (today) online booksellers, starting at $180 per copy from its limited run. And somewhat like the 3,500 luthiers it documents in an encyclopedic format, “The Violin Makers of the United States” by Thomas Wenberg (Pizzicato Publishing Company, 1986) was painstaking researched by hand.

By hand and a pickup truck, that is. Author Wenberg drove back and forth across the US for the better part of two years, from one violin shop to another, to gather as much information as was possible from the violin makers of that time, most of whom are unknown in the great concert halls and universities where fine instruments are played. In fact, among the craftspeople he interviewed – in person as much as possible, and certainly not via email or studied online, as those communications and information technologies were in the most nascent and inaccessible forms in the mid-1980s – some were best described as hobbyists. Others were the premier luthiers in America, however, prized by musicians of ambition and accomplishment.

Wenberg later went on to a political career, serving in the state senate of Oregon under a new name, Wilde. Which hints at the quirkiness of Wenberg, who readily acknowledged, despite his accomplishments, having learning disabilities (dyslexia and attention deficit disorder), being an “extreme introvert,” and social anxiety. He nonetheless overcame these as barriers to assembling the most complete summary of violin makers in the country.

It bears knowing that Americans who made fine stringed instruments were generally not as highly regarded as the European masters of previous centuries. Another chronicler of the craft, Christopher Germain (a Philadelphia-based violinmaker), notes that very crude, amateur-built instruments constructed in the Colonial period appear to have been made out of frustration more than anything else, the better European-made fiddles being rare and expensive. European makers began to immigrate to the Americas by the 19th century, upping the ante considerably. By the latter 20th century, America’s stability and prosperity drove its violinmakers to match those of the Old World. Germain says the violins made in the US began to rival their European counterparts by the 1980s.

Wenberg/Wilde’s book is unrivaled and heralded, even if a large percentage of the people chronicled in “The Violinmakers of the United States” may by now have passed on. Violins in auction houses today might make note of the luthier’s pedigree for being in the book.

But just as notable is how this shy person somehow overcame his own insecurities to accomplish something remarkable through an exhaustive, solitary effort – using a pickup truck instead of a Google search window to learn about the people who make fine stringed instruments. Not unlike luthiers themselves, whose largely solitary work creates something enduring, Wenberg/Wilde crafted a tome worthy of great music, great musicians and great instrument making.