Playing a Stradivarius comes with strings attached

Owning a Stradivarius comes at a price: about £10m. Picture: Contributed

The fact is, few of these instruments are actually the property of those who play them – and that applies right across the string family, as Antonio Stradivari made plenty good violas and cellos, even mandolins and guitars, as well as his signature violins. They are mainly owned, and loaned out, by rich institutions, foundations and wealthy individuals, which tends to place a huge weight of responsibility on the beneficiary.

Think of last month, and the relief South Korean virtuoso Min-Jin Kym must have felt when the violin she had on loan, and which was stolen three years ago from under her nose as she wrestled with a sandwich at Euston Station, was unexpectedly recovered by police and handed back to her.

Little wonder the custodians of Strads, whether they own them or not, tend to protect them like a precious child. You won’t catch Nicola Benedetti, former Scottish Chamber Orchestra leader Alexander Janiczek, or Clio Gould, formerly artistic director of the Scottish Ensemble leaving their borrowed fiddles under the table as they head to the bar for another drink.

As top London string dealer (and apparently bare-faced chauvinist) Charles Beare commented in advance of the current Stradivari exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum: “Such violins among musicians usually have a higher status than wives.”

So keep an eye out this Edinburgh Festival for the violinist with the Strad permanently strapped to his or her back. It could be any of the following: Frank Peter Zimmermann, who plays the “Lady Inchiquin” that once belonged to Fritz Kreisler, now owned by the Westdeutsche Landesbank; Klaidi Sahatci, leader of the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, with a violin on loan from Mercedes-Benz Zurich; or Liviu Prunaru, leader of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, whose 1694 Strad was “graciously offered” to him by the orchestra’s board of sponsors.

But for those lucky enough to get hold of one, there are generally conditions attached. Those, for instance, whose loan has been brokered by the American-based Stradivari Society – a body set up by the late Chicago violin dealer Geoffrey Fushi and wealthy musical benefactor Mary Galvin to match deserving musicians with the right instrument – are held to account on several levels.

The lucky soloist has to be able to afford the insurance on the instrument, a not inconsiderable sum. A society curator must inspect the instrument three times a year; no other violin maker must touch it. And not only should they continue to prove themselves good enough to hold on to the instrument, but the recipient must also be prepared to play three personal performances a year for the patron, at their home or for some other special private occasion.

In the wider world of Strad lending, however, there is a code of confidentiality that prevents many of the recipients from disclosing anything about the conditions of the loan, especially where wealthy individual lenders are concerned, though its well-known that Benedetti received her Stradivari from London-based money man Jonathan Moulds, on the condition she agreed to play for him and his friends “a few times a year”.

She must be doing all right as far as Moulds is concerned, because she’s now on to her second Strad from him, having replaced the original “Earl Spencer” with the recently adopted “Gariel” Stradivari of 1717.

With any of these instruments, the worst moment is when you have to hand them back, as witnessed last month at the East Neuk Festival, when the Tokyo Quartet, following its last ever European concert before disbanding, faced returning not just one Stradivari, but the whole string quartet family of Strads, once owned by Paganini, that had been on loan to them for almost 20 years.

“It’s like having a limb removed,” cellist Clive Greensmith told me. Well, they do cost an arm and a leg.