Given that, here’s a big shout-out to the proprietors of MarshAnne Landing Winery, who have seen fit to invite some classical musicians to have recitals in their tasting room/gallery. The space can hold thirty people or so, making it quite cozy; the “stage” is nook with a decent-but-not-fabulous upright piano and room for a string quartet or a single very expressive violinist. The concerts are the personal effort of the winery’s proprietors, so programming is necessarily modest. Joshua Bell won’t be playing there, and the two recitals we’ve seen may be all for the season, but they’ve been thoroughly appreciated. I don’t feel like being the music critic here; my attitude is more gratitude than judgement. So, I’ll go on about some externalities.
One program featured the violinist Lindsay Deutsch, playing
a very casual show of Gershwin, Piazzola, Vivaldi, Brahms, and De Falla (the
pianist played one of the Debussy Images
while the violinist took a break). The
concert reflected the cultural stereotype that when you go out into the sticks,
you have to play pop or light classical stuff.
It was pretty clear that there were a few audience members who would not
be satisfied with any violin show that did not involve some of Vivaldi’s Four
Seasons—and “Winter” was duly served up, to audible sighs of contentment. The Brahms concerto was presented, but with apologies
about its length and (to prevent boredom, I guess) as isolated movements
separated by shorter, snappier pieces. It
was nice to get the Piazzola; it’s a little off the beaten path, and I really
enjoyed the De Falla “Suite Popular.”
The concert by Chamber Music Amici of Eugene was a bit more “Serious”;
a Mozart violin sonata, a cello sonata by the 20th-century
Portuguese composer Luis Costa, and a string quintet by Bruch that, while
written in 1918, had only been published around 1980. It was so nice to hear unfamiliar stuff
presented straight up; the cello sonata was convincingly delivered and the
Bruch made me go home and buy a recording.
The performances were good; the Amici have day jobs, and though most are
connected with music, the violinist for the Mozart is a practicing
physician.
A couple of the instruments being played were of interest to
the Real Doctor and me. We are both a
bit geeky about violins, and sometimes my attention to the music can be
diverted by attention to the violin it’s played on. In this case, the instruments were both
inspired by Guarneri “del Gesu”, but took the inspiration in different directions.
The first, from across the room, really
had the look of a del Gesu, but as it was played, it just didn’t seem to have
the same tonal oomph. It (and the
player) was clearly aspiring to tonal richness, but it just was not really
there. The second instrument looked
del-Gesu-ish, maybe early 1730’s, but just didn’t seem visually to be abused
enough for a violin of that age.
However, its sound was rich—not as rich as the best del Gesu’s, but much
more satisfying than the first violin.
There are different schools of thought about what makes the
difference between a good and a great violin.
Being who I am, I tend to think in graphs. Here’s what some people like, which happens
to be the first violin:
On any note, at any volume, the violin can only produce a
limited number of interesting tones; however, it’s extremely uniform across the
entire spectrum. There’s also this:
Combine that with the fact that it tends to sound good under
the ear of the person playing it, and you have what some people—including big
names such as Hahn and Tetzlaff—find satisfying. It should also be noted that the brown line for your average student violin rarely gets as high as the brown line above.
Here’s a rather different sort of violin, which happens to
be the second violin, and also is more like the violins of Stradivari and del
Gesu.
Few or no notes are wanting in tonal richness, and some
regions are positively oozing with the stuff.
But,
It takes a lot of work to pull that stuff out of the
violin. It’s harder to play, and
effectively use the entire endowment of the fiddle—but if the player has the
skill and patience to exploit it, the results are amazing.
The violin is a tool, a physical entity. So what makes this difference? The musicians giving these concerts were
generous enough to let us take a closer look at their instruments and tell us
about them.
The first violin was a Vuillaume, made in the
mid-1800’s. Vuillaume enjoyed a
reputation for making the finest copies of the finest violins, so it’s not too surprising that the fiddle visually
announced itself as “del Gesu” from across the room. However, close-up, a couple of details
emerged. One was that the arching was
very low—if you looked at the fiddle side-on, it was several millimeters
skinnier than a classic Cremonese instrument, which bulges out 15 or more mm
front and back. Another structural
detail that affects sound was the absence of recurve as the arch blends into
the side of the violin; if you were an ant, marching from the bridge to one of
the sides, your trip would be downhill all the way, rather than pitching
up for the last few paces. These
structural details—and lack of tonal richness--are pretty characteristic of
Vuillaume. Now, these are not horrible
fiddles; I wouldn’t reject one as a gift, and one recently sold at auction for
over $200,000. They are just not my
thing.
The second violin of note was an American instrument made by
Carl Holzapfel in Philadelphia in the 1920’s, who was (it turns out) the
great-grandfather of the violinist. It
had nice arching and nice recurve. As I
mentioned, it also had terrific sound; according to the violinist, it won a
slew of awards and was the pride and joy of its luthier. Holzapfel has some limited recognition as a
good maker, and despite the obvious quality of the instrument, it will never
sell for a tenth of what the Vuillaume will bring. Go figure.
This raises a couple of questions. The obvious one is why does sound mean so
little in the sale price of a musical instrument—but the answer there is
probably like the answer to why a 500-square foot apartment in downtown New
York costs as much as our farm. Another
question, to which I don’t have a good start of an answer, is why Vuillaume
made the copies he made in the way that he made them. Was he aware of arching, and discounted it as
meaningless? Did it just not register in
his eye? I just don’t know. To emphasize the point, I’ll close with photos
of a different Vuillaume and a real Cremonese violin (alas, I can’t remember
its identity; I think it’s a Petro Guarneri; the photos were taken during the 2012 Claremona workshop).
And here, courtesy of Michael Darnton, is a video of a Brothers Amati violin that really illustrates the classic shape I'm talking about: Go watch this!
And here, courtesy of Michael Darnton, is a video of a Brothers Amati violin that really illustrates the classic shape I'm talking about: Go watch this!
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