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  • In 2008 violinist Philippe Quint was flying back to New York from a concert

  • in Dallas. He took a taxi from the Newark Airport

  • to Manhattan and before he could take his violin out, the car pulled away.

  • It probably the scariest and most devastating experience of my life.

  • The cab driver returned the instrument a few hours later, but the incident scarred

  • Philippe for good reason. This wasn't just any violin he left in the cab. This

  • was a Stradivarius violin worth over four million dollars that's on loan to

  • him. It's like losing part of yourself, you know. It's like somebody cut off your

  • hand and especially given the fact it's not your hand.

  • This hand already was

  • belonging to someone else.

  • Even if you're not a musician like me, you've probably

  • still heard of a Stradivarius violin.

  • Stradivarius. Stradivarius. Stradivarius.

  • There's some of the most famous string

  • instruments in the world. And some of the most renowned musicians have declared

  • their love for them.

  • This instrument has a soul and it has an imagination. It's not

  • a tool. It is a part -- it's a total extension of me.

  • Strads, as they're sometimes called,

  • are incredibly valuable and can be worth up to 16 million

  • dollars. But are they actually worth it?

  • I headed up to Lincoln Center to meet

  • Michelle Kim to find out.

  • I am the assistant concert master of the

  • New York Philharmonic.

  • The characteristic of a Strad in general is that it has a silvery tone. And it

  • creates this incredibly sweet tone, so if you were...

  • For me the Strad has a sweet quality to it, but also able to take some blows. So

  • if I were to play something really hard...

  • and versus you know something...

  • By playing on my daughter's instrument I would have had to...

  • press kind of hard to to make that sound come out, but you would lose the quality

  • that you're actually looking for.

  • The source of the Strad's brilliant sound

  • can be traced back to its maker artisan Antonio Stradivari was a luthier or

  • violin maker who lived in Cremona, Italy in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

  • He crafted these string instruments for most of his life and

  • produced an estimated 1,100 instruments in his lifetime.

  • But only about 650

  • survived today.

  • These instruments are rare and there's a long tradition of

  • nicknaming them.

  • The 310 year-old violin that Philippe plays

  • is called Ruby.

  • I have to admit, I'm a little nervous to be around that.

  • My god, please don't do that.

  • I googled the gemstone the ruby and the description, I think was

  • that it's a stone of passion and mystery.

  • And immediately I attributed these

  • qualities to this violin and to this day I really feel that it's true. For

  • generations, musicians have claimed that Strads have a superior sound to modern

  • violins, but can most people actually tell the difference?

  • Researchers in Paris

  • performed a double-blind study with professional violinists, to see if they

  • could tell the difference between old Italian violins like Strads

  • and new violins.

  • They had musicians wear very cool sunglasses while they played

  • multiple instruments from each era.

  • The study found that even elite musicians couldn't reliably tell which

  • violins were old and which were new.

  • And maybe more surprisingly, most of them

  • actually preferred the sound of the new violins over the Strads.

  • One measure of

  • This is Joseph Curtin, one of the researchers behind the study

  • and a violin maker himself.

  • But maybe the worth of a Strad isn't wrapped up in its sound alone.

  • Michelle's violin has been passed down through generations of violinists for

  • almost 300 years, from the Duke of Cambridge, to the German composer Louis Spohr,

  • to Ureli Corelli, the founder of the New York Philharmonic.

  • It is literally a link to the past.

  • It is a piece of history that you are holding.

  • I feel like this violin is the New York Philharmonic, because it has existed as

  • long as the New York Philharmonic has.

  • It's been amazing to be a part of this Strad's life.

In 2008 violinist Philippe Quint was flying back to New York from a concert

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斯特拉迪瓦里小提琴為何價值百萬? (Why Stradivarius violins are worth millions)

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    Evangeline 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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