There were two strong bidders for the Lady Blunt Stradivarius and the winner paid £8.75 million ($14.2m), an auction record for a Cremona instrument. Plus a million and a bit more to the auction house.
That’s a lot of money for a trophy instrument that will never be played after decades of disuse. The buyer remains anonymous, wisely no doubt.
It’s John Le Carre, and about time, too.
The medal is given for outstanding service to the German language and international cultural dialogue. Ever since he wrote A Small Town in Germany nearly half a century ago, no English language novelist can match Le Carre’s acute inside view of Europe’s central nation.
Here’s the announcement.
John le Carré is the recipient of one of the three Goethe Medals awarded this year. The Goethe Institute awards medals each year for outstanding service to the German language and international cultural dialogue.
The Goethe Medals will be presented to John le Carré, Ariane Mnouchkine and Adam Michnik on the 28th August 2011 in Weimar, Germany. Ariane Mnouchkine is an icon of European theatre and Adam Michnik a Polish intellectual who has contributed greatly to dialogue between Poland and Germany in particular.
The first Goethe Medal was awarded in 1955 and since then 326 people from 58 countries have been honoured. Le Carré joins an impressive list of Goethe Medal recipients including Billy Wilder, Karl Popper, Daniel Barenboim and Jorge Semprún.
The medal honours John le Carré’s life work. The author, who is fluent in German, set one of his best known novels, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold in Germany.
A committee of the German Bundestag has savaged the Wagner family at Bayreuth for handing out too many free tickets to friendly politicians and public celebrities. Of 57,000 available seats, 2,500 went to Wagner pals and pols. The committee wants parliament to impose tighter scrutiny on the Wagner family. About time, too.
Here’s a German report.
That’s what fans of Korean boy band ShinEE have been claiming since I spotted them yesterday at the studios. But is it really so?
I have some recollection of Decca recording the Chung trio, but perhaps that was another London venue.
Rack your brains, ye who read this site, and help us keep the record straight.
Here‘s the latest band pic.
And here’s a first update: bob Dickinson reports that ???Seikima-II – Japanese Heavy Metal Band – recorded their album, ‘Ponk!’, at Abbey Road in 1994.
The auction ends tonight and the highest online bid so far for the Lady Blunt Stradivarius is stuck on £6million ($9.6m).
The last time it sold, in 2008, was to the Nippon Music Foundation for $10 million. Now the Foundation is selling it to raise funds for Japan earthquake relief. A price well in excess of $10 million has been anticipated.
The Lady Blunt is one of the two most perfectly preserved Strads in existence (the other is the ‘Messiah’ at the Ashmolean in Oxford). It has not been played in half a century and cannot ever be brought back to the stage. But as an exemplar of the craftsman’s original work it is almost unmatched. Eleven hours to go. Keep bidding. Watch here for the outcome.
