Strad left on German train: The plot thickens

Strad left on German train: The plot thickens

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norman lebrecht

January 08, 2016

The owner of the ‘General Dupont’ Stradvarius, a China-based millionaire, has been in touch through his New York dealer to say he’s upset by reports that his previous violin was left on a regional train in Germany.

Didn’t happen, he says. And Jennifer Koh last played his violin in 2011.

So it must have been a different violin. But evidence does seem to be pointing to Jennifer as the forgetful fiddler, since she played in Mannheim and Saarbrücken on the dates concerned.

We’ve tried to reach her for confirmation, but the silence is profound.

Happily, the violin is safe.

jennifer-koh

 

Comments

  • Peter says:

    Insurance related?

  • Francis says:

    The plot thickens?

    Seems a lot thinner now to me.

  • cherrera says:

    Violinists leaving their violins on trains or in taxis would be like mothers forgetting their babies on trains or taxis, how could it possibly happen?

    Well, every once in a while, you do read in the news about fathers leaving their toddlers in their cars on a hot day in a parking lot with the windows up, and they are prosecuted and their children placed in foster care.

    The same thing should happen to such violinists (minus the prosecution): their violins should be taken away from them and placed in care of someone more deserving and loving.

    • Gerhard says:

      Concluding from your post, you are in all likeliness not a professional musician. If you are an amateur musician, you will travel with an instrument presumably not more than once or twice a week at the most, provided you play a transportable one at all. No pianist ever left a piano behind in a train or cab. Have you any concept by which factor the probability of a single moment of inattentiveness increases, if you are traveling with an instrument practically every single day of your life? Yet such a loss is a very rare incident, and nobody will be more devastated about such a mistake than the person to whom it happens. I have been carrying around my instrument for decades now, and thank goodness this has never happened to me. But I sure don’t have the arrogance to claim that it was because I’m simply too smart for it.

    • Step Parikian says:

      Well, it does happen, but not very often.
      My father once got half way up the M40 from Oxford to Heathrow before realising he had left his fiddle (a Strad too) at home, causing a rapid return and very bad language. That was not dissimilar, and he loved and cared for his violin. I know other musicians who have done something similar.
      So, I am sorry cherrera but your comment is “misguided”.

  • Robert says:

    Ya know… they make tags for luggage that will alert your phone if you move past a certain distance away.

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