Last night I was invited by one of the professors here at Cambridge to an event at Madingley Hall,
a small stately home kind of a place that's now a conference and events venue. The event was a bit hard to describe, but it was part lecture on the history of the violin, and part demonstration and concert featuring some antique violins.I think the event was billed as "Meet a Stradivarius" or something like it. Wine and canapes were promised, too.
Well, I was game, even if it wasn't something that I would have pushed to the top of my "must see" list.
The speaker,Nigel Brown, is apparently a world class expert on violin history and was very engaging, funny and informative. His planned featured violinist for the evening, Matthew Trussler, had been whisked off to a concert in South America, so at the last minute he had secured the services of a delightful young lady I can only remember as "Flo".
Nigel had brought along four violins and had Flo play Baa Baa Black Sheep on each of them. The sounds were remarkably different, especially the last one. As he gradually revealed, one of them was a 1706 Stradivari, another a 1735 Guenari, another a Jacob Steiner violin from Austria and the last a recent copy of (I believe) another Strad. The odd man out was the Steiner.
The hour of chat and demonstration flew by, and after the break it was time for some real music. Flo played first a Brahms Sonata in D minor on the Guenari, accompanied by a delightful young lady on piano, followed by Sarasate's Introduction et Tarantelle on the Stradivari (the Corbett Stradivari to be precise). In his introduction, Nigel likened the instruments to Formula 1 cars - being just as tricky to get used to and drive, and Flo agreed. It was remarkable that she had only had a day to try the four out.
The Sonata was lovely, but the Sarasate piece was a completely brilliant mad five minutes. Flo remarked just before she started, "see you at the end..." And, thanks to the marvels of Youtube, here's a fine rendition of it by Jessica Hung:
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