Trish's Reviews > Geschichte einer Stradivari

Frédéric Chaudière is a luthier by trade and thus knows his stuff. Like most luthiers, he really knows about Stradivari. There is a lot of highly contented "knowledge" about the master (more on that in my review for the non-fiction book I was reading in parallel), but Chaudière pieced together enough about Stradivari's "Gibson" violin and its history.

This is the masterpiece:

There are MANY famous instruments that have had quite a life! The Stradivari cello "Mara" comes to mind. The story presented here is no different.

You see, the Gibson (nowadays called "Gibson ex Huberman" on account of its owner Bronisław Huberman) was built in 1713. The fascinating bit is that the violin, while being the property of Mr. Huberman, was stolen TWICE. Once in 1919 in a hotel in Vienna (it was brought back soon and not much is known about the details) and once in 1936 at Carnegie Hall. This second time is the more interesting one in that we know who had it (most likely), for how long, and what happened to the thief.
I can spoiler this much: the owner never saw the Stradivari again as the instrument was returned only 51 years later. The violin was restored by experts and is now played by Joshua Bell who bought it, too (not always the case with such high-priced instruments).



A very nice little book that tells of the instrument itself, the eras since it was created, what happened to its thief through the decades and lutherie as well as its evolution from Stradivari's time until the book was published.

I enjoyed the writing style and didn't mind the translation (the original is in French), which made me happy because there is little that is more annoying than a good story being told in a bad or at least boring way.

Really cool little story and history as well as lutherie lesson all rolled into one.