No Longer Second Fiddle
By John Guinn
Free Press Music Critic
Detroit Free Press, Tuesday, November 16, 1993
Gregg Alf remembers showing the first fiddle he made to a famous instrument maker. “Forget it!” the maker said. “Go into some other line of work.”
Joe Curtin remembers jumping up and down on one of the first instruments he made when it didn’t seem to be turning out right.
Despite such ominous beginnings, the two instrument makers have refined their craft to such a degree that one of their fiddles sold earlier this month at London’s famed Sotheby’s auction house for 22,000 British pounds sterling.
That’s $33,000 in American funds, and while it is considerable less than the record $1.7 million a 1720 Stradivarius violin fetched when auctioned two years ago, it marks the highest price ever paid in auction for an instrument by a living maker.
Clearly, Curtin and Alf, who have been making violins, violas, and cellos in their Ann Arbor factory for the past 15 years have come into their own.
“The Sotheby’s sale marks a turning point,” says Alf, a 36-year-old California native. “People are finally beginning to see that modern instruments are worthwhile.”
The 40-year old Curtin, who hails from Toronto, said several people bid on the violin, including a member of the Berlin Philharmonic. It was purchased by Carmine Lauri, a concert violinist from Malta.
“We didn’t know Lauri at all,” Curtin said, “and that made it even more perfect.”
The general public as well as many professional string players have longer believed that instruments made by famed 17th and early 18th-Century Italian masters like Antonio Stradivari, Nicolo Amati and Giuseppe Guarneri are preferable to modern ones made by craftspeople like Curtin and Alf.
“There’s been a lot of prejudice against new instruments,” says Curtin. “It shows up especially with the ones that are bright red. The coloring comes from the shellac, and some people shy away from these instruments because they look new. They tend to associate value with the muted tones of antique instruments. The irony is that when Strads were new, they were bright red.”
Curtin and Alf, who originally intended to become professional violinists, studied their craft at the famed International School of Violinmaking in Cremona, Italy, where Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri worked. They design new instruments as well as exact copies of older ones.
The instrument auctioned at Sotheby’s is an exact copy of a 1716 Stradivarius. Curtin and Alf made a copy of concert violinist Elmar Oliverira, who has been using it fro the past two years. Oliverira played it when he performed with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in Orchestra Hall in 1991. He decided to sell it because he is replacing it with another Curtin and Alf instrument, a replica of a 1726 Guarnerius he recently purchased.
Curtin and Alf work together on copies like this one that sold at Sotheby’s. But they work separately when making new designs. Last year they made 24 instruments, and Curtin says that was “a fairly good year “We’d make more if we also didn’t have to take care of the business side of things.”
About half of their output ends up in Europe. Five members of the Berlin Philharmonic play their instruments, along with Yehudi Menuhin and Ruggiero Ricci.
“WE really believe that a good part of an instrument’s greatness only shows up when it’s played by a terrific player,” Curtin said. “The instruments seem to develop more quickly if played by a good player.”
Stephen Shipps, who teaches at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, is one of those “Good players”. He bought a new instrument from Curtin and Alf weeks ago.
“I’ve been playing their instruments off and on for five years now,” Shipps said. “I’ve got four students who are playing them, and I got talked into buying one when I saw theirs.”
Shipps talks about his new instrument, which was made by Curtin in commercial-like terms.
“To start with, it’s beautiful just to look at. I hate having an instrument that sounds good but doesn’t look it. This one is gorgeous.
“And it’s absolutely even to play on through all its registers. There are no dead spots. It has a fantastic amount of sound. A lot of modern instruments have volume, but there’s also to this one’s sound. It’s so mellow.”
Shipps sees Curtin and Alf as fulfilling a vital need.
“Prices for vintage violins are just outrageous,” he says, “I bought one two years ago that has gone up $50,000 in value. Young players can’t afford those kind of prices. But they need good instruments.”
That’s not to say that the instruments Curtin and Alf produce are exactly cheap.
“Our current base price is $15, 500,” Alf says. “And we raise our prices about 10 perfect a year.”
Still, that’s considerably less than the $1.7 –million price tag for the 1720 Strad. Besides, if you don’t like what Curtin and Alf come up with, you could always jump up and down on it.