Violin dealer sets up opposite Carnegie Hall
NewsThe Boston-area firm Reuning & Sons have opened a ‘by appointment only’ showroom on 57th Street, within earshot of America’s musical mecca.
Reuning has also grown an international foothold, including links with the Geneva-based Eduard Wulfson who lists Valery Gergiev as a principal contact. Wulfson has acted in multi-million instrument investments for Vladimir Putin’s bag-carrier Sergei Roldugin.
The independent Moscow Times reported in 2016 that Reuning deleted a Stradivarius sale to Roldugin from its website.
Violin dealers post and delete sale information from their websites all the time. The big story isn’t that another violin shop opened up in NYC. I think the big story is that violin shops generate enough money and sales to maintain the expenses on such a premium rental, and by ‘appointment only’
You probably won’t find any acting musicians there….$$$$$ 🙁
The violin mafia… wait, I didn’t say that
Musicians have known about the Putin/Gergiev/Reuning/Wulfson relationship for awhile, but it’s nice to see it publicly exposed. Very sad to see such great instruments ending up in the worst hands. Very unethical and the deleted Stradivarius cello is just the tip of the iceberg.
I, probably like so many before and after me, had the “Reuning” experience of visiting their Boston shop a few years ago to show them my old Italian violin, only to hear that it must have been “of French or German origin and not worth more that US 5,000.” A few days later, a Chicago-based shop informed me that the same instrument was definitely of Italian origin, possibly by the Gagliano family, and worth at least 30 grand.
How about the story of the famous violinist that Reuning sold a Strad to and failed to disclose insect damage? In Korea, we’ve heard awful many stories about this dealer.