THE LAST STRAD.

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 February 1937, Page 9

THE LAST STRAD.

YEARS UNDERGROUND. It was stated in a message recently that the “Baillot” Strad had been dug up from a backyard in Rio de Janiero, and was again to charm lovers of music. This violin was buried in a tin box in 1920. It belonged to Enrico Marques-Valle, wealthy music patron. In his will, Senhor Marques-Valle instructed his wife.to give Daniil Karpilowsky, who had been studying at the Rio de Janeiro Conservatory of Music,’ first opportunity to .buy his treasured Strad. Karpilowsky, violinist in the Guarneri Quartet, went to Rio from Holland, afid bought the instrument after Fritz Kreislei* had definitely identified it as a Strad on which he had played as a lad. Before burying his violin, in 1920, Senhor Marques-Valle had it dismantled and included a. certificate of the instrument’s authenticity by the Paris firm of Charles Enel and Cie.,. stating that 1737, the year Stradivari died, was the correct date of manufacture.

It wasj made to order for an. ancestor ofi Rene-Paul Baillot, whose father Pierre, was a celebrated violinist. Last owner of the instrument generally known to the musical world was Mme. Julien Sauzay of Paris. After 1893 it disappeared except for vague rumours that someone in South America had bought it.’ When the great House of Hill of New, Bond Street, London, gathered a census of Stradivarius instruments at the turn of the century, this “Baillet” Strad wasn’t enumerated. There were traces of 100 missing Stradivarius violins when a total of 540 were reported by owners, together with a dozen violas (contralto and tenor viols), with hints of one or two more. The old master -is estimated to have made 1036 violins and violas.

80 ’CELLOS IN 80 YEARS. A Stradivarius violoncello is without peer. The maestro devoted eighty years to making 80 ’cellos. There are 50 of these in existence, with traces of seven or eight others. Discovery of the Brazilian “Baillot” is the first find in half a century. How can any of them have been lost? Though it was left to later eras to fix the true measure of Stradivari’s peerless genius, the Cremonese fiddle-mak-er was of sufficient fame in his lifetime to'be his home town’s greatest publicity asset. He had European renown as possessor of’ “an energetic grasp of his craft and fertility of idea equal to maintaining the glorious traditions of the past and to raising the art and renown of his native city.” Are there still Stradivarius 'instruments to be found? Almost certainly. There’s nothing to do but sigh, of course, over those known to have been destroyed. The leader of the orchestra at Covent Garden, London, was playing on a Stradivarius in 1808. That night the Opera House burned, the violin with it. Charles IV. had a Stradivarius collection in the Royal Palace at Madrid at the time of the French occupation. One subsequently turned up in Paris in 1819. Others may still be found, perhaps, this time, as a result of another revolution —that in Spain to-day. What of a Stradivarius, for instance, stolen from a British attache of the Embassy at St. Petersburg some time between the winter of 1869 and; the end of 1870? Despite the Bolshevik revolution, the chances are much more for'than against its still being in existence. Some day, who knows how casually, it may turn up in Siberia. Antonins Stradivari was 93 when he made the now-resurrected instrument. When he had finished it he peered, through a palsied f’hole betraying his trembling hands, on his signature. Little did he think that 10,000 “Stradivarius” labels would be faked for every one of his genuine 1116 trade marks.

Experts studying Stradivarius violins made in the grand old man’s nineties have found that his hand trembled so much in cutting grooves for the purling around the outer edges that the knife played havoc in all directions. Sandpaper marks show striations and corners are ponderously blunt and of a squarish appearance when compared with violins of Stradivari’s golden age, the decade beginning 1710. His old and enfeebled, though practised hand, was modelling heavily. Varnishing shows a certain heavyhandedness, and is wanting in softness, texture and that perfect transparency and richness of colour that characterise earlier instruments.