David Wallace/Special to The Malibu Times
Some claim it’s the construction. Others say it’s the wood. Most claim it’s the resin-based varnish on the 300-year-old violins that make them sound like no other.
We’re talking about the Stradivarius, accepted in their maker’s lifetime as well as the present as the ultimate violin.
Prime examples of the some 600 remaining of the nearly 1,100 instruments made by Antonio Stradivari in Cremona, Italy, between ca 1664 and 1737, sound like no others; the tone being sweeter, with more evenness, and greater carrying power.
Computers have dissected their construction and chemists have analyzed their varnish and woods (usually pine and maple) in an effort to reproduce them today, but to no avail.
Equally mystifying is the maker’s own story; a genius who appeared, seemingly overnight, within the closed society of Cremonese violin makers.
These puzzlements are the theme of “The Mysteries of Stradivarius,” a one-hour special that Malibuite Albert Stern, a concert violin soloist, will be making this fall for the cable documentary series, NOVA.
“It’s really a detective story,” Stern said recently in the huge living room of his home (which doubles as an occasional recording studio and concert hall, seating 300) and six-acre quarter-horse ranch, dubbed the Villa Cote d’ Azure.
“Why did the acoustics and manufacture of an instrument reach perfection three centuries ago?” he asks rhetorically. “And why, despite today’s technology, have they never been improved upon?”
As great a mystery is that of Antonio Stradivari himself.
“Most violin makers in Northern Italy came from a long line of string instrument makers,” Stern says. “Stradivari appeared among them as a young man and, right from the start, built instruments that became legendary. It is suspected that he started as a furniture maker based on the intricacy of the inlay work on instruments commissioned by royalty.”
In an era when the average life span was 35 years, Stradivari also lived to an active 93, even making several instruments in his last year.
Stern, whose talent was reviewed by the former Los Angeles Times critic Martin Bernheimer as “dazzling,” began his romance with the violin when he was six and his father bought him his first violin. He studied extensively at the Juilliard School in his native New York, both before and after moving to Los Angeles at 13. Throughout his youth he studied with some of the world’s greatest violin pedagogues, including Ivan Galamian and Dorothy Delay.
Today he practices three to four hours daily, playing Paganini caprices, Bach solo sonatas, and his own arrangements for violin of popular songs, operatic arias and familiar classics (recorded as “The Road to Love I and II,” and available from RdA music, P.O. Box 4225, Malibu, CA 90264, or www.rdamusic.com).
In 1970, his mother bought him a Guarneri del Gesu violin, made in 1726, which was selected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1994 to be part of an exhibit of the 25 best Guarneris in the world. That year Stern traded it for two Stradivarius instruments, then worth some $5 million. He subsequently sold one, and kept the prized violin he uses in concert and recordings today. Like most famous Stradivarius instruments, it bears a name; in this case, the “Count Molitor-Napoleon,” after the French nobleman who commissioned it in 1697, and France’s emperor who had it for several years. The violin remained in Molitor’s family until 1914 when it was sold to an amateur violinist in Ireland. It was purchased in 1935, for $15,000, by violinist Efrem Zimbalist’s wife as a wedding gift for her husband who used it until the end of his career. Today, looking more like a healthy 30-year-old than a veteran of more than three centuries of use, the “Count Molitor” will also star in the Nova special, played by Stern.
“We will be dealing a lot with acoustics and the making of the violins,” Stern says of “The Mysteries of Stradivarius” which is in pre-production now.
“We’ll also go into all aspects of his life and include re-enactments from his life. But it will be more than just an homage to a genius,” he adds.
“Our research has uncovered some previously undiscovered facts that might just help explain why Antonio Stradivari’s instruments were, and still are, the finest ever made by humankind.”