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In 2008 violinist Philippe Quint was flying back to New York from a concert
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in Dallas. He took a taxi from the Newark Airport
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to Manhattan and before he could take his violin out, the car pulled away.
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It probably the scariest and most devastating experience of my life.
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The cab driver returned the instrument a few hours later, but the incident scarred
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Philippe for good reason. This wasn't just any violin he left in the cab. This
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was a Stradivarius violin worth over four million dollars that's on loan to
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him. It's like losing part of yourself, you know. It's like somebody cut off your
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hand and especially given the fact it's not your hand.
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This hand already was
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belonging to someone else.
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Even if you're not a musician like me, you've probably
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still heard of a Stradivarius violin.
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Stradivarius. Stradivarius. Stradivarius.
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There's some of the most famous string
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instruments in the world. And some of the most renowned musicians have declared
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their love for them.
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This instrument has a soul and it has an imagination. It's not
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a tool. It is a part -- it's a total extension of me.
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Strads, as they're sometimes called,
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are incredibly valuable and can be worth up to 16 million
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dollars. But are they actually worth it?
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I headed up to Lincoln Center to meet
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Michelle Kim to find out.
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I am the assistant concert master of the
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New York Philharmonic.
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The characteristic of a Strad in general is that it has a silvery tone. And it
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creates this incredibly sweet tone, so if you were...
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For me the Strad has a sweet quality to it, but also able to take some blows. So
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if I were to play something really hard...
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and versus you know something...
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By playing on my daughter's instrument I would have had to...
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press kind of hard to to make that sound come out, but you would lose the quality
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that you're actually looking for.
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The source of the Strad's brilliant sound
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can be traced back to its maker artisan Antonio Stradivari was a luthier or
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violin maker who lived in Cremona, Italy in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
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He crafted these string instruments for most of his life and
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produced an estimated 1,100 instruments in his lifetime.
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But only about 650
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survived today.
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These instruments are rare and there's a long tradition of
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nicknaming them.
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The 310 year-old violin that Philippe plays
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is called Ruby.
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I have to admit, I'm a little nervous to be around that.
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My god, please don't do that.
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I googled the gemstone the ruby and the description, I think was
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that it's a stone of passion and mystery.
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And immediately I attributed these
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qualities to this violin and to this day I really feel that it's true. For
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generations, musicians have claimed that Strads have a superior sound to modern
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violins, but can most people actually tell the difference?
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Researchers in Paris
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performed a double-blind study with professional violinists, to see if they
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could tell the difference between old Italian violins like Strads
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and new violins.
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They had musicians wear very cool sunglasses while they played
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multiple instruments from each era.
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The study found that even elite musicians couldn't reliably tell which
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violins were old and which were new.
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And maybe more surprisingly, most of them
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actually preferred the sound of the new violins over the Strads.
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One measure of
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This is Joseph Curtin, one of the researchers behind the study
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and a violin maker himself.
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But maybe the worth of a Strad isn't wrapped up in its sound alone.
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Michelle's violin has been passed down through generations of violinists for
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almost 300 years, from the Duke of Cambridge, to the German composer Louis Spohr,
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to Ureli Corelli, the founder of the New York Philharmonic.
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It is literally a link to the past.
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It is a piece of history that you are holding.
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I feel like this violin is the New York Philharmonic, because it has existed as
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long as the New York Philharmonic has.
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It's been amazing to be a part of this Strad's life.