Los Angeles is about to experience an embarrassment of riches relating to the appearance of superb violinist virtuosos.

Therefore a rash of articles about the violin and virtuosos have appeared.

Of course, with the Violin have been created in Italy, and the finest known creators of violins being Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri ("Del Gesù") it makes for very pleasant reading.

An article follows regarding violinist Guiliano Carmignola who currently makes the Baroque Violin Sexy in the New Century.

And then excerpts of an article where one of LAs Philanthropist Richard Colburn rhapsodizes over the one Stradiveri and one Guarneri (each worth about $3 million)
that he keeps in his home to be played by visiting artists for Charity events.

It all further reminds us of the enormous cultural contributions of Italia, unmatched by any other society.
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MUSIC
L.A.'s STRINGED VICTORY

Fiddle fans, rejoice: The city's concert halls host a wealth of superstar violinists this season.

Los Angeles Times
By David Mermelstein
December 11 2003

The violin's origins are shrouded in mystery. It has been associated as much with the devil as with the sound of angels. Though it can convey whole worlds, it is as portable as a briefcase. It is arguably the most written about, obsessed over, fetishized instrument ever made by man.

And we are fascinated by it. By its high soprano voice, its otherworldly harmonics, its rich darker tones. To be sure, the violin is a beautiful object, its shape pleasingly curvaceous, its hue varying from honey to chocolate. But first and foremost, the sound is what grabs us.

"It's almost like a trumpet sometimes on the E string, and the G string can sound like a somber voice," "The violin has so many colors."

"The closer an instrument is to the human voice, the more emotional directness there is. And of all instruments, the violin sounds closest. Subconsciously that's true, and so it clicks with people's hearts and brains."

There will be a bumper crop of famous fiddlers that Los Angeles will hear this season. The Walt Disney Concert Hall, insists that it is also presenting plenty of fine pianists and other worthy instrumentalists. Yet the roster of violinists is a veritable Who's Who.

Baroque violinist Giuliano Carmignola will arrive in February, as will Hilary Hahn. Maxim Vengerov will perform in March, and Christian Tetzlaff will collaborate with the Philharmonic.

Nobody is likely to complain about a surfeit of virtuoso fiddlers, though. Audiences have long been unable to resist the visceral thrill that comes from watching them perform what Robert Lipsett calls "musical high-wire acts with no net."

"Misplace a finger by no more than the width of a human hair and the instrument will suddenly be out of tune."

"It's like asking a centipede, 'With which foot do you begin walking?' " he says. "The moment he thinks about it, he can't walk anymore. And it's like that with the violin: You can't find words for it. It has to be some sort of magic."

That magic can be enhanced by a performer's very stance, "If you compare the violin to any other solo instrument, there's so much more going on," she says. "The flamboyance of the bowing arm is very exciting to watch, and also the rapid movement of the fingers on the left hand. The fact that it looks hard is also part of the appeal. That adds to the drama of the performance. There are soloists who don't move around very much, but they're in the minority."

No one knows exactly when the first violin was made, only that it was probably in Italy between 1550 and 1600. But the instrument's development was rapid. Unlike almost all other modern instruments, whose present characteristics evolved in the 19th century, the violin achieved the form we know not long after its creation. Moreover, the finest examples of the instrument were produced a mere century or so later and remain, by common consent, unsurpassed to this day.

Lipsett says the violin's singular history is part of its allure. "I think it makes for a remarkable contrast that we can look at something like airplanes, which in the 20th century went from the Wright brothers to the Concorde," he says, "and then realize that for 350 years the violin hasn't really changed."

The violin's mythic image was effectively secured by Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri in Cremona, Italy, between the late 17th and mid-18th centuries. Both men were the greatest talents in their respective family dynasties and produced not just violins but also lutes, guitars and other stringed instruments.

Stradivari, whose name is sometimes Latinized to Stradivarius, is virtually synonymous with violins of exquisite tone and great beauty, colloquially called Strads. He was prolific, working until he was 92. His well-known reddish varnish has long been thought to contribute to the magnificence of his instruments, about 650 of which survive.

Guarneri and his violins are best known by the moniker "Del Gesù" because his labels bore the letters I.H.S., which in both Greek and Latin assert the power of Christ. His instruments are renowned for their rich tones and their ability to absorb forceful playing, something that appealed to the great virtuoso Nicolò Paganini, who in the early 19th century started the vogue for Del Gesùs. In the 20th century, such celebrated soloists as Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Henryk Szeryng and Arthur Grumiaux swore by these violins.

"The general feeling is that the Strad is more refined, but as such, you have to handle it with care. It has tremendous overtones, but you can crush the sound by playing it too firmly. The Del Gesùs you can dig into. That's why Heifetz played one. And the look of the instruments reflects these distinctions. The Strads are perfectly proportioned, but the Del Gesùs, which are coarser, have their own beauty. The scrolls are very untidy, the F-holes imperfectly cut. There's a rough-hewn beauty to them, like those unfinished Michelangelo sculptures."

Sadler says such craftsmanship places the violin above other instruments. "A flute is just a flute," she says. "Whereas with a violin, it's made of wood, and that involves so many more choices. Wood is such a flexible material, and the makers have to have a lot of skill. I'm in real awe of anyone that can make a violin."

Today, a fiddle by Guarneri or Stradivari can sell for $3 million or $4 million, according to Wen. Such prices fire the public imagination and help explain why someone would steal a Strad belonging to 91-year-old Erica Morini as she lay dying in her New York apartment in 1995.

"Violinists are obsessive about finding just the right instrument," says Wen. "Maybe that's why the violin is likened to the devil — not just that it's hard to play but that the instrument itself has a hold on people."

Though not named outright, a Strad or Del Gesù was clearly the inspiration for the stringed star of "The Red Violin," the 1998 movie that centered on the journey of a single outstanding fiddle across the centuries. John Corigliano's score to that film won an Oscar, and the composer has extracted themes from it to produce a concerto that Joshua Bell will play when he appears with the Philharmonic in May.

It's not quite right, though, to suggest that Strads and Del Gesùs have come down to us as though right off the workbench. Superficial parts like strings have been replaced innumerable times. And even more substantial alterations, like the lengthening of necks and the thickening of interior sound posts, have been made to these instruments, mostly between 1780 and 1820. As the latest edition of the Oxford Companion to Music definitively puts it, "No great violin survives as it came from the hands of its maker; all have been changed."

Beyond creating obscure objects of desire, Stradivari and Guarneri helped music develop. Their work crowned the era that made possible Europe's great composer-violinists. From the 17th century through the 19th — from Corelli, Vivaldi and Tartini through Paganini— those who wrote for the violin also often played it.

But as the 19th century wore on, that tradition declined, so that by the 20th, a Heifetz was transcribing Gershwin songs rather than writing his own violin concertos. Lipsett, for one, regrets the passing of the legacy. "We don't really have composer-violinists anymore," he says. "And I don't know why that happened."

Violinists in the modern era are also less frequently said to belong to one of the so-called national schools — Russian, Franco-Belgian, Austro-German — that dominated the art of fiddling from the mid-19th century through much of the 20th.

Those schools gave violinists personalities, says Wen, who believes something central to the violin's appeal has been lost with the trade-off of powerful traditions for peripatetic virtuosos offering only technical prowess.

"People are concentrating too much on the left hand, the pyrotechnics," says Wen. "The right hand, the bow arm, used to be the soul of the violin. Kreisler's bowing was amazing: articulate, incisive, inimitable. Thibaud's vibrato was hardly there at all, but he spun the sound through the bow magically. Before World War II, vibrato was used with greater variety. The bow today is just plastered onto the strings. It doesn't let up. It doesn't breathe."

Sadler blames these changes on modernity, at least indirectly. "If you looked at the technique of those today , it would be quite different from, say, legendary virtuosos . "But these days many violinists sound quite similar".

And though Sadler acknowledges the archival value of recordings, she takes technology to task as well. "The advantage of the prevalence of recordings is that performance standards have improved," she says. "But the disadvantage is that because you can listen to the best and imitate the best, you might not go down your own path. Young violinists often play it safe."

The artists themselves would probably beg to differ. The best consider themselves links in a long chain, absorbing lessons from masters and in turn passing them on. It's why they make so much not just of an instrument's provenance (Strad, Del Gesù, etc.) but of its history. Bell, for instance, speaks proudly in interviews of playing a Strad played by greats.

And listen to Zimmermann discuss his 1711 Stradivari, "It's not only a great Strad, but it also somehow has a soul. Sometimes it seems it almost plays itself."

Violinists are the music world's poets. "With the piano, there is something mathematical and mechanical," he says. "Violinists are more emotional and intuitive."

That, of course, is among the most compelling things about fiddlers — their ability to dazzle beyond audiences', and perhaps their own, comprehension. And with so very many of the world's greatest violinists coming to L.A. this season, the opportunities for awe-inspiring evenings approach the overwhelming.

Yim of the Philharmonic says that violinists above all other performers bedazzle him. "It's scary-remarkable," he says. "The bowing, the fingering, the precision required — it's just jaw-dropping. I sit there gaping."

Yet the connection between these players and their instruments transcends cause and effect. Violinists feel bound to their instruments. They regard them as appendages. "It's like your second voice, your second soul," Zimmermann says. "It's part of your body."

David Mermelstein can be contacted at weekend@latimes.com.
calendarlive.com: L.A.'s stringed victory
http://www.calendarlive.com/music/classical/
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MUSIC
Ready to take a bow
VIOLINIST TAKES THE VIOLIN INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Los Angeles Times
Calendar Section
December 11 2003

GIULIANO CARMIGNOLA

Along with Fabio Biondi and Andrew Manze, Carmignola is one of the fiddlers three who have made the baroque violin sexy in the new century.

Casting off notions that period strings need to sound thin and dry, this Italian-born musician plays with a vibrancy that more "modern" players might envy.

He is probably best known to American audiences through his collaborations with conductor Andrea Marcon and the Venice Baroque Orchestra. Their recordings of Bach and Vivaldi for Sony Classical have earned warm reviews, though they've just jumped labels to Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv line.

Fittingly enough, Carmignola makes his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut on Feb. 8 in an all-Vivaldi program, with Venice Baroque and Marcon happily in tow. And, yes, the program includes "The Four Seasons."

calendarlive.com: Ready to take a bow
http://www.calendarlive.com/music/classical/
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SOCIAL CLIMES
SOME RARE PERFORMANCES INDEED

Stradivari and Guarneri instruments take center stage at a benefit
for the American Youth Symphony.

By Ann Conway
Los Angeles Times
December 12 2003

In L.A.'s salon society, wealthy music aficionados and accomplished musicians gather in private homes to enjoy what others can only wonder about. Some salons, like Colburn's palatial music room on Tuesday, which netted $65,000 ( $1,250-per-person) for the American Youth Symphony, are fundraisers. Others are arranged as expressions of gratitude to major arts benefactors.

For the 92-year-old Colburn, the retired entrepreneur who financed the $25-million downtown L.A. home of the Colburn School for the Performing Arts, having musicians perform at his Italian-style estate perpetuates a passion for music that began when he took his first violin lesson as a young boy. "I like helping organizations committed to music," he said before the party began.

He also likes helping "young people of exceptional talent" by lending them instruments from his 72-piece violin, viola and cello collection, he said. "I've been collecting them since I was in my early 30s, and right now, 55 are on loan. That's where they're supposed to be." Recalling a visit to a collector of rare violins as a teenager, Colburn said he became infuriated when the man brought out a Stradivarius but refused to let him touch it. "When I reached out, he pulled it back," he said. "I thought he was handing it to me to hold and set a bow to. I thought to myself, 'Stradivari didn't make that instrument to be locked up in a cabinet.'"

Colburn's rare Stradivari and Guarneri instruments, were not locked up, and had  each artist rhapsodizing about the prized strings.

The Westwood-based American Youth Symphony, founded in 1964, seeks to give aspiring musical students ages 16 to 25 the opportunity to perform symphonic works in preparation for professional careers, "We have placed 108 people in major orchestras around the world. It is my dream that they will all end up in one of the best orchestras in the world."

calendarlive.com: Some rare performances indeed
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