The Stradivarius owned by the late Ida Haendel has been loaned by the dealers J&A Beare to a Romanian violinist Alexandra Tirsu.4
She will play it in recording sessions with the LSO at Abbey Road tomorrow. ‘Beyond excited,’ she says.
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What are they recording? Enescu?
I doubt it. Had a quick look down her repertoire and Enesco isn’t there. Schnittke’s Suite in the Olden Style IS, however. Yummy.
Sorry, meant Enescu. My spelling was automatically (in)corrected.
What is this rubbish about?
Anyone knows the sound of the violin is irrelevant.
Nobody in the slobbering mass media hyping everything and their dog to propagate the Strad myths, even mentions the bows that Ida used.
Where is that bow now?
I will bet they and her personality were 99% of the Ida Haendel instantly recognisable playing.
Quite apart from this who cares about boring old dinosaurs like Abbey road.
They belong to the 60s and 70s pre digital era, and have zilch to offer, least of all ‘cos CDs do not sell.
I repeat, CD recording is DEAD, and they can’t even sell seats for the proms so what chance of this “shot in the dark”.
Any classic recording and you will be lucky to sell 30 or 40. These are facts.
Ie.
There is NOTHING special about A-R, nothing special about the Strad, but there was everything special about Ida’s playing, like her or hate her.
Same was true of Heifetz on his Tononi or his Del-Gesu with the famous Kittel bows.
Be that as it may, “So What?”, the fact remains that die-hard violin and violinist fans listen to and talk about Zino Francescatti’s monaural recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto with Ormandy in part because he recorded it, not on the “Hart” Strad, but on Fritz Kreisler’s del Gesu. And it did sound different than, say, his Tchaikovsky or Prokofiev concertos of about the same time-frame because of the violin used. I suspect it also FELT different to Francescatti.
I would concede that Alexandra Tirsu has not established anything like the instantly recognizable combination of Francescatti and the Hart Strad, so using the Haendel violin for one recording session is unlikely to cause the decades of discussion that the Francescattti Brahms recording has done.
Lighten-up dude.
Your rant has nothing to do with anything at all. It seems the only ‘point’ is on your head!
I call bollox on your discussion about Francescatti and his violins.
Do you know anything about monaural recording (stuff the old Neumann U87 tube microphone smack next to the instrument, practically under the performer’s nose)…?
Compared with the far more balanced modern possibilities and better orchestra/soloist balance which actually enhance the projection of the instruments and make them sound so much better.
Do you know anything about the performance of TAPE at different speeds and saturation levels v compression?
An expert on that subject recently died, (Tim de Paravicini) and his set up of the best tape machines proved just how bad the Abbey road crap really was.
I don’t agree with most of his work, but he knew his stuff about recording via tape, and proved it many times over.
eg. I can guarantee to make a Strad sound like a Guarneri just by fooling with some compression algos and a few other tools in the engineer’s toolbox.
A recording from a so called “top flight” radio team, I can equally prove many times is just rubbish (Austrian radio, ERR, Radio classique Paris and many others).
Fact is, modern recordings sound radically different from old Mono 78s just in terms of Frequency response and compression.
I challenge anyone to tell the difference between a modern top quality instrument and any old worn out strad (like eg. A-Sophie-Mutter’s crappy worn out semi-destroyed instrument).
Do you realise over 2-3 centuries all these old instruments have actually shrunk?
It’s what happens to wood,- a testament to that nice slow growing little-ice-age wood, that is has lasted so long at all!
There is nothing objective about all those mythical violins and recordings, unless you replicate the self same conditions in the same studios with the same equipment you are up sh..t creek without a paddle.
The only person to have done this successfully – let’s hand it to him, – another instantly recognisable violinist.
Ruggerio Ricci.
Maybe you should ask the people who have played them. The ones I know say that very few other instruments have such a variety of available sounds. It is the same with other instruments. There are just some makers who can produce something head and shoulders above the rest.
Oh, well said. It’s about time this myth was put to bed. I, too, am fed up of the obsession with the ” sound” of various violins. The sound that matters comes from the gifts of the person playing and makes them instantly recognisable and distinct from every other player. Take Elman, for instance, with his myriad colours and nuances which no other player could replicate, and, what would be the point anyway?
That’s the Violin (and it’s owner) for which Allan Pettersson composed his magnificent Violin Concerto 2. It would be a crime if that Violin never again performed it.
Much more gropeable than Ms. Wagner.
I’ve owned (with great pride) Sir Clifford Curzon’s Steinway Model D for the past 32 years. Try as I might I can’t sound anything like him
How true! I played on a Steinway D belonging to a concert pianist and I just simply cannot reproduce that marvelous sound. (Wish I could!!!).