The Story of the $15 Million Da Vinci Stradivarius

I like your thought that high prices of antique violins will cause more modern violins to get attention from great players (and the public). While there is definitely a difference between a well-made violin and a cheap one, I think the player makes more difference than the instrument.

When I lived in Providence, RI, I was good friends with Harry Kazarian. We often talked about violin making and playing. He was a very good player, much better than I am. As you may know, he owned a Stradivarius, an Omobono from 1728. I had the pleasure of playing that violin, and it was indeed a pure pleasure. Harry gave me several rare books on violin making, and also a number of violin making tools. He had studied violin making at Wurlitzer in New York. I remember him fondly.

I'm always sad so many of these wonderful old instruments never get played.

I absolutely love to hear this man speak on the topic of violins, he is so precise with his words!! He seems to be authoritative on his trade. In this video i finally got my question answered, namely i thought he was british but he says he is australian, thanks Olaf, love your videos on the subject of the violin, perhaps the world's most beautiful and noble of all musical instruments! Israel Perez, Guatemala, C.A.👍🙏🎻

I was also watching this auction, not as closely as this, but I youtubed as much of Toscha Siedel to get a sense of the sound of that violin. When I heard enough, I was confused by the tone of the D and G strings, which sounded nasal; up to the point it occurred to me that maybe this is one of the few Stradivaris that has never been revoiced or had the scale length extended. Just a hunch, anyway. I was expecting it to be similar to Perlman’s Soil Stradivari, but life is full of little surprises.

You have been such a bright spot in my depressed life I binge watch your videos once a week And they never get old and they help to cheer me up THANK YOU!!!!!

Don't laugh to hard. But this question comes from experience installing aluminum siding facia. We have to use aluminum nails since they don't rust on the facia. If the wood sits in the sun for to long it becomes hard and the aluminum nail is hard to drive (follow ?). Maybe Strad hardened the plates and maybe C bouts with sunlight. Or at least tuned with the sun for acoustic reflection and frequency propagation through the plates.

Sad these instruments don't get played. I saw one in a museum.

Thank you very much for this comprehensive and informative overview! What a fascinating history and trajectory for such an instrument. It was wonderful to see TwoSet's visit to Tarisio highlighted as well. My hope is that our celebration of legacy instruments will, as you mention, further encourage the creation of modern examples of true excellence.

Ooh, always glad to see your videos. Its like getting a verbal apprenticeship. And while it obviously doesn't mean that watching videos gives you the skills of the experts, it DOES give you the blueprints for HOW to develop those skills. No one can do everything so YouTube is a godsend for people who love learning

Fantastic story! Thanks plenty for your time

I've just bought a Musafia case that was originally made for and owned by Joshua Bell for the Gibson ex-Hubermam Strad, that's the closest I'll get. The case is an early 100th birthday present for my 1925 Gustave Villaume violin.

Hi Olaf you probably already know that Christies, in London on the 07/07/22 are auctioning another great Stradivari called the Hellier made in 1679. Great video's, I really enjoy watching your work.

I hope the investor loans it ( with consideration to all conditions for preservation) to a world class soloist or orchestral first violinist such as the Commonwealth Bank did in the 19800s . A good investment that must be played. A pity about the Lord Spencer that just sits in a glass case in a museum.

Maybe the older violins sounds really good because it's been played and micro tuned by some of the best musician over time.

I have 254 yeats old violin and i are player and luthier i can tell you the harmonics the ringing and the tone its diferent i think the maker take care of who are design and made the instruments , the musicians take care of all of the instruments and the time do it the rest. Like the vine.

This violin was quite the amount of $$$. Remember when they wanted $45 million for a viola? That was a joke. And yes, I'm a violist, viola dealer and bow dealer and still think that that was a ludicrous amount.

It's like buying a house. An investor doesn't actually toss $13M of his own money into the auction. He borrows it. Very often he borrows it from the auction house itself, just as a car dealership borrows the money to buy GM cars from GM's own financing division. But unlike selling a car, the value of an investment property is solely the expectation of what it can later be sold for. If the buyer turns around in two years and sells the violin for, say, $15M (again, very often through the same auction house), he's made two million dollars in two years, and all it cost him was the interest on $13M he's been paying to the money lender. And why would the next buyer pay $15M for the violin? It's because he expects to turn it around in a few years for maybe $18M. The game continues until the market tops out, for whatever reason, and then somebody's stuck. But until then, any other virtue of the property is irrelevant. This all caused a bit of excitement a decade or so ago when it was leaked that one of the major art auction houses was itself financing the spectacular (or gross, depending on your viewpoint) inflation of paintings by certain dead artists. Not illegal, but somehow annoying. But it certainly accounts for some very strange market values. Now of course with instruments, buyers are not just interested in future selling price, but sometimes in reputation - whether or not it's merited. An orchestra would like some of its soloists to have instruments which the public believes to be special, and that makes something like this worthwhile for the orchestra to finance.

Nice summary Olaf 🙂 For some reason I had a figure of 17M in my head for the Da Vinci strad, but maybe I was confusing it with something else haha. Who knows though, they could go for that sum in the not so distant future…

Olaf, I love your channel very much🌹 However, Antonio’s last name actually was Stradivari 😉