instruments on displays in museums.
How is is any different than housing Jacques Cousteau's or Julia Child's most famous dish
under lock and key???
And Anne Akiko Myers...
Wow, what would I give to hear her play this violin live?
Some dozen years ago, a London plutocrat who had studied at the Royal College of Music invited me to his bedroom. He shut the door behind us. Bending low, he reached under the bed and extracted a violin case, which he reverentially opened.
‘Know what this is?’ he demanded. I could see what was coming.
‘It’s the Vieuxtemps Guarnerius del Jesu.’
I knew enough about the fiddle trade to appreciate the name drop. The Vieuxtemps, built in 1741, took its name from the great 19th century Belgian virtuoso. It was later played by Yehudi Menuhin and Itzhak Perlman. For the past 50 years or so, it has been privately – silently – owned in London, kept mostly under a bed.
Three years ago it was put up for sale at an asking price of $18 million. That was about twice as much as has ever been paid for a pedigree violin. It failed, as they say, to find an early buyer.
Now, however, the London firm of J&A Beares have sold it for an undisclosed – though, they say, world record – amount. The previous top was the ‘Lady Blunt’ Strad, sold in 2011 for $14.2 million (plus auction commission).
The new owner wants it to be played. he has chosen as artist to bring it back into play for the rest of her life.
She is Anne Akiko Meyers. Here is her first public performance 0n the instrument last month, unreleased until tonight.
Putting Heifetz's Violin Back Into Action
When a singer dies, his instrument dies with him. When an instrumentalist dies, his instrument lives on. And as of Sept. 4, the voice of the violinist Jascha Heifetz will start a new life in the hands of the concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony, Alexander Barantschik.
Heifetz willed his favorite violin, a 1742 Guarneri del Gesù, to San Francisco's Fine Arts Museums, with the stipulation that it be played on special occasions by worthy performers.
Since his death in 1987, accordingly, the violin has mostly been on display at the Legion of Honor Museum, with a brief residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, being played only a few times a year. Itzhak Perlman has performed on it, as have Isaac Stern, Robert McDuffie, and Gil Shaham. So have a handful of students at the San Francisco Conservatory.
The idea of putting the violin in the hands of an active player was hatched more than a year ago during a meeting between Brent Assink, the symphony's executive director, and Harry S. Parker III, the executive director of the Fine Arts Museums. Mr. Parker asked Mr. Assink's help in setting up a chamber music series in the museum, perhaps featuring the violin. Mr. Assink mentioned that he had a new concertmaster arriving from Europe (Mr. Barantschik began at the symphony last September).
via {norman lebrecht}
via {ny times}
0 comments:
Post a Comment