“Three years after his death, my father, virtuoso violinist Roman Totenberg, made headlines all over the world when his beloved Stradivarius violin, stolen 35 years earlier, was recovered by the FBI,” writes Nina Totenberg on Tuesday (10/9) at National Public Radio. “When we three Totenberg sisters got the violin back, we were intent …that the instrument, now known as the Totenberg-Ames Stradivarius, would be played in concert halls everywhere and not be closeted away in some collector’s vault…. The co-owners of Rare Violins, Ziv Arazi and Bruno Price [who restored the violin], were approached by … a person whose identity we still don’t know… He was willing to buy the violin but not for himself…. Arazi and Price have founded something called Rare Violins in Consortium, a way for wealthy patrons of the arts to acquire string instruments and then lend them out to promising young musicians for years at a time. My father’s violin will go first to 18-year-old Nathan Meltzer…. ‘I don’t know how to explain how great it sounds,’ he says.… Tuesday is the last day that the violin will be, in any sense, the property of the Totenberg family, though it will always bear my father’s name.”
Posted October 10, 2018
