Word: stradivarius
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...common, the wunderkind and the defector. One commands the stage like a young princess, voluptuous in a strapless designer gown that accents the alluring curve of her shoulders and the luxurious corona of her billowing tresses. As Anne-Sophie Mutter lays her bow on the strings of her Stradivarius, the music swells seductively, and all at once the intoxicating perfume of the theater fills the air. "Music is a form of love, the highest form of love," she says. "It is passion...
...Altman did not want to die without sharing his greatest secret. Before succumbing to cancer in 1985, Altman, 69, told his wife, "Look between the violin case and the cover, and you'll find some interesting papers," she recalls. There she found newspaper clippings reporting the theft of a Stradivarius violin made in 1713 from a Polish virtuoso in New York City in 1936. Altman's violin, it turned out, was the missing Stradivarius...
Altman told his wife he had purchased the violin for $100 from a "friend." These days a Stradivarius can command as much as $1 million. Altman's widow will have to settle for an undisclosed reward from the instrument's rightful owner, Lloyd's of London, which 51 years ago paid the violin's last owner $30,000 for the loss...
...Japanese-born Midori showed she was that and more at Massachusetts' Tanglewood festival, where she was playing Leonard Bernstein's difficult Serenade with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, directed by the composer himself. When her E string gave out, she calmly appealed to the concertmaster, who handed over his Stradivarius. When the Strad's E string snapped a few moments later, Midori again turned to the concertmaster, by now playing his associate's Guadagnini. He traded again, and she flawlessly finished the piece, earning a tumultuous ovation from the audience and hugs and kisses from Bernstein and her two lenders...
...None of the other universities offered me a Stradivarius to play," she explained...