‘STRAD' FOR THE NATION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 54, 6 March 1939, Page 11

‘STRAD' FOR THE NATION

High Prices That Have Been Paid

r £HE STRADIVARIUS VIOLIN, bequeathed recently to the Victoria and Albert Museum by Mrs. Beatrice Mulgan, is one of those treasures which look unpretentious to the uninitiated. The ordinary visitor who gazes at this neto acquisition, a noticeably small violin which wears a brownish-orange varnish, may, perhaps, ask himself, Faustus-like: “Is this the ‘Strad’ The bequest of an authentic specimen, the only Stradivarius in the national collections, falls most auspiciously in the year of the bicentenary celebrations at Cremona, where Antonio Stradivari (.born, circa 1644; died 1737) lived and worked. Fakes abound. An acquaintance of the writer owns a spurious Stradivarius. A committee of experts at Cremona examined 239 violins which had been submitted for inspection, and not one was accepted as authentic, although some were attributed to various pupils oi the master. Several bore imitated signatures. The specimen now in the Victoria and Albert bears Stradivari’s label with his device and date. 1699; it is of maple, pine and other woods. Part of the Cremona celebrations involved performances by such famous violinists as Herr Adolf Busch on instruments of which the genuineness was beyond doubt. Some forty authenticat-

ed “Strads" were exhibited, being borrowed from owners in various parts of the world. Mr. Alfred Hill, of the famous English firm of W. E. Hill, was among the lenders. As far back as 1890 a genuine Stradivarius fetched £2OOO. Al the Red Cross Sale in 1915 a violin by the master, dated 1702, and belonging to Lord Newlands, was sold for £2500. A street musician. “Jack the Painter,” who frequented the neighbourhood of Notting Hill during the ’seventies, bought a fiddle for twenty-five shillings He subsequently sold this instrumen to an eminent dealer for the same number of pounds. The dealer, after reconditioning it, sold the violin for £BO. In 1904 the same instrument was certified as a genuine Stradivarius of 1729 and fetched £7OO. The most famous Stradivarius violins have names after the manner of certain celebrated pictures, gems, etc. The violin equivalent cf a Koh-i-noor or a Rokeby Venus will be a Stradivarius with a name such as Sarasate, Tuscan, or Betts. What was Stradivari’s chief secret? Most authorities appear to insist above all on the rare qualZy of his varnish. It has also been suggested that the greatest of violin makers had a seventh sense in testing the resonance of wood.