Playing a Rembrandt': Strads set the standard for great instruments
DSO's Emmanuelle Boisvert is in love with a rare Stradivari that's hers for just 18 days

By Mark Stryker
FREE PRESS MUSIC WRITER
Detroit Free Press, December 29, 2002

So what did Santa bring you for Christmas? Emmanuelle Boisvert got a 1718 Stradivari violin worth approximately $3 million. Sure beats the heck out of a blender.

To be honest, Boisvert, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra concertmaster, has the rare fiddle on loan for just 2 1/2 weeks. And the return address isn't the North Pole but Ann Arbor, home of violin-maker and dealer Gregg Alf, who represents the instrument's owners.
But for Boisvert, 18 days with a Strad represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to nuzzle up to one of the 620 or so surviving violins made by Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737), the genius of the unparalleled age of violin-making that flourished in Cremona, Italy, in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Boisvert will play the instrument in this week's DSO concerts, for which her duties include the solos in Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade."

After Sunday's concert, the violin will be returned to a high-security vault, although there is a chance that it could return to Boisvert's hands, even if she doesn't win the lottery. The cherry-red Strad, known as the "Marquis de Riviere" in honor of its 19th-Century French owner, is quietly for sale.

Not that Boisvert could afford it. The seven-figure price tags commanded by Strads, as well as by gold-standard violins made by other Cremonese masters like Guarneri del Gesu, have put these instruments out of reach of all but the wealthiest superstar soloists like Itzhak Perlman or Joshua Bell. For any other violinist, the only hope of ever having one rests on patrons, foundations or groups like the Chicago-based Stradivari Society, which specializes in linking wealthy collectors and donors with gifted violinists.
Given the "Marquis de Riviere" violin's pedigree and value, the owners -- a small partnership that includes the family of the former concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra -- have no interest in selling to the first collector willing to write a check. But they have indicated they would be delighted to see Boisvert keep the Strad if a Detroit investor or consortium should step forward to buy it and lend it to the DSO.

This week's DSO's concerts are akin to a coming-out party for the "Marquis de Riviere" Strad -- or, from another perspective, a dignified infomercial: It's a chance for Detroiters to hear what the instrument can do.

Meanwhile, when the usually reserved Boisvert talks about the violin, she gushes like a schoolgirl squealing over Leonardo DiCaprio: "I'm in love!" she said a few days before Christmas, while practicing at Orchestra Hall.

"It's like playing a Rembrandt. I can keep pressing and it doesn't crack. The sound is so rich and dark and pure but powerful. I found that I have to narrow my vibrato a little bit, have it more focused. But if I hit the right overtones, if I play perfectly in tune, it starts ringing and ringing."

Stradivari violins are a magical blend of Old World craftsmanship, baroque engineering and artistic beauty. The mystique that surrounds them makes it difficult to separate myth from reality. But even with the analytical tools of modern science at their disposal, contemporary violin makers have yet to duplicate the balance of operatic projection, prismatic color and exquisite purity that distinguishes the tone of a great Strad.

With CAT scanning, sonar and other techniques, a gifted maker today can clone the exact three-dimensional shape of a Strad, the sonic qualities of the wood and the chemistry of the varnish. The best modern instruments can sound nearly as good as a Strad.
Similar, yes. The same, no.

"Stradivari was just an amazing craftsman," says Alf, 45, who apprenticed as a violin maker in Cremona before relocating to Ann Arbor in 1984. "He used very fine materials, and he did everything right. Today, we still use them as the baseline for making an instrument."
Alf says he thinks the secret to the sound of a Strad begins not only with the age of the wood (maple and spruce), but with the fact that the wood has aged in a violin that has been played by virtuosos for hundreds of years and maintained the way top race cars are constantly tuned to stay at the highest level of performance.

Alf also says he believes there may be specific construction details that we still don't know about, particularly what kind of treatments or preparations may have been used on the wood. Stradivari left no diaries that detail his working methods.

Each Strad has its own personality, tied to its sound, provenance and appearance. The "Marquis de Riviere" is particularly beautiful, with a back that is highly flamed (a term that refers to a wave-like pattern visible in the fiber of the wood). The soft-textured varnish is a deeper red than usual, and when light hits the fiddle, the interplay of the varnish and the base wood glows like a golden sunset.
The "Marquis de Riviere" dates from the heart of Stradivari's golden period, between 1710 and 1720, when he is thought to have been at the peak of his powers. The first 75 years of the instrument's history are lost, but the Riviere family of France acquired it at the beginning of the 19th Century.

The modern life of the violin began in 1934, when the famous Russian-born violinist Efrem Zimbalist acquired it for the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he taught. The concertmaster of the Indianapolis Symphony, Leon Zawisza, bought the violin in 1947.
In 1964 it was acquired by Daniel Majeske, the assistant concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra and, as fate would have it, a native Detroiter. Majeske became the Cleveland concertmaster -- the first violinist and leader of the string section -- in 1969.

Majeske's son, Stephen, who would eventually follow his father into the Cleveland Orchestra, says he doesn't know what his father paid for the instrument but noted that in the early '60s Strads cost between $15,000 and $30,000.

Daniel Majeske patterned his sound after the Russian star Nathan Milstein, who also played a golden-period Strad. Majeske adored the "Marquis de Riviere" because it helped him capture the spirit of his idol.

"I never remember my father being apart from that instrument," his son recalls. "We took a family vacation when I was 16, and I had just gotten my driver's license. We left a restaurant and we were five minutes down the road, and my father -- I thought he was having a heart attack -- said, 'Turn around! I left my violin!'

"I remember because it was an opportunity to speed. I had my father's blessing to drive as fast as I could to get back to the restaurant."
The only time Stephen Majeske saw someone other than his father play the violin was when Isaac Stern was performing the Brahms Violin Concerto in Cleveland and broke a string. Protocol dictates that in such cases the concertmaster surrender his own instrument so the soloist can continue, and Stern whirled around to borrow Majeske's violin.

"I still remember the look on my father's face, which was, 'Oh, my gosh; what do I do? I don't want to give it up.' "

For tax and estate reasons, Daniel Majeske made arrangements shortly before his death in 1993 for the violin to be acquired by a private partnership. His son retained the right to play it for the duration of his career, but health reasons forced him to resign from his orchestra position in 2001.

Which brings us to a recent day in November when Boisvert, in the market for a new violin, strolled into Alf Studios to take a few out for a test drive. Alf gave her three or four of his own instruments to try and then, without disclosing its identity, put the Strad in her hands.
Ten minutes later, she pulled the violin from her chin.

"This is it," she said. "How much is it?"

When told the violin she'd been playing was a Strad, Boisvert immediately handed it back. Why fall in love with a violin she could never afford?

But it was too late. The instrument had etched an indelible memory into her brain. With nothing to lose, she called back a few weeks later and asked if she could borrow it for this week's concerts.

Stephen Majeske said the potential marriage of Boisvert and the "Marquis de Riviere" excites the owners because of Boisvert's enormous skills and because of the instrument's heritage as a Midwest concertmasters' violin. Moreover, Boisvert began her career with two seasons in the Cleveland Orchestra, before winning her current job in 1988. Plus, the elder Majeske had Detroit roots.

So Boisvert holds out hope that a local patron for the Strad can be found. But if Sunday's concert is the last time she ever plays it, she'll simply count her blessings.

"I'm honored and thrilled. And if nothing else happens, I'll have three performances that I'll remember for the rest of my life."

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