July 2007

My Italian

July 23, 2007 20:59

In which I quit slacking and FINALLY write about my most recent life-altering event.

When I walked into Peter Prier and Sons violin shop in Salt Lake City about two weeks ago, I was expecting to return to Tulsa a few days later armed with information, a few questions answered, a sense of what a really fine violin is like to play, and hopefully a repaired violin. I was not really expecting to come home with a NEW violin, but I think somewhere in my gut I knew that's what I was heading for.

Flashback. Innsbrook Institute, early June, near St. Louis. My violin had been finally behaving itself almost well, and for once it wasn't hair-tearingly difficult to play. Right on cue, at the end of rehearsal on the next-to-last day, I somehow seriously overdid an up-bow and smacked what I thought was the E string but turned out to be the bridge. When I took it out of its case later and started noodling on some scales, my fingers almost fell off the fingerboard on the G-string end and I finally noticed that the bridge had moved a good two millimeters. I managed to weasel it back more or less into position, but it still sounded pretty lousy and felt worse.

For the last year at least, I'd made a regular habit out of kvetching about how hard my violin was to play. I know the violin just IS difficult to play as a matter of principle, but it shouldn't be THIS hard, I kept telling myself. I developed an absolute obsessive-compulsive mania for experimenting with string brands/types, different rosin, rehairing the bow before it really needed it, and driving my local luthiers absolutely bonkers with my persistent complaints. I felt like I had hit a brick wall--I could not play any cleaner, I could not get any more colors. Typically of me, I was convinced I was simply a mediocre violinist at best, artistic gifts limited, mercurial practice habits and an excess of improvisatory exuberance all to blame for my lack of progress. It was really bloody depressing.

But then came the Innsbrook incident, and I couldn't stand it anymore. The damn thing was, at last, completely unplayable. A former teacher of mine had frequently regaled me with stories about the magician-luthier Peter Prier (he also regaled me with tales of Sergiu Luca returning from a European tour with four Strads and three Guarneris in tow, but that's another blog) so long story short, my mom and I headed out to Salt Lake City a few weeks later.

The plan was to have him take a look at my injured fiddle and see what he could do to fix it, and while I was there I figured I'd play whatever drool-worthy Cremonese jewels he happened to have lying around the shop, just to know what an extraordinary violin felt and sounded like.

Well, the charmingly Austrian-accented Maestro Prier took one look at my violin and knew exactly why I had been going out of my mind for the past year: the C-bout was extraordinarily wide, therefore the bridge was quite high, therefore the neck was at a strange angle. An unusual violin--perhaps still an excellent violin for someone with nice big hands and long arms (i.e. not me), but for me it wasn't working. It was fixable, but hardly cost-effective.

Before we'd left Tulsa, we had communicated some with Peter's son Dan, who also works in the shop and is also some sort of wizard. As soon as my mom described me, my playing and the general issue, he said "I have JUST the violin for her."

So that was the first violin he handed me: Carolus Moretti Anconiensis, Rome, 1928. I liked it immediately: nice shape and size (it's on an elegant Guadagnini pattern); spectacular red-brown varnish; rich, contralto tone that was nevertheless as clear as, for lack of a better term, a bell (La Campanella?). Best of all, it was soooo easy to play, I could play things that I hadn't touched in four years and play them pretty nearly spotlessly (when I remembered where the heck to put my fingers, that is.)

I must have played forty other violins that day, most of them in the same general price range as the Moretti, and none of them even came close. I was granted the privilege of playing the Firebird Stradivari (seemed annoyed that I wasn't Salvatore Accardo), a nameless Strad from around the same time (sounded like it hadn't been played in centuries) a pristine Vuillaume (gorgeous, but a touch too French for my taste) a Guarneri del Gesu (had a husky dark voice like a soulful old gypsy, but a total beast to play) and then I fell quite madly in love with a 1791 Storioni, absolutely flawless, never had a scratch, sounded better than the two Strads and the Guarneri put together, obeyed my thoughts instead of my hands.....erm, and cost more than my parents' house. Back into the vault with it.

Aside from the million-dollar instruments, nothing came close to the Moretti. I was nervous though--buying a violin so immediately? The first place I looked? Was I nuts?

The next day, we were all paid a visit by Baltimore Symphony assistant concertmaster (and fellow v.commer) Igor Yuzefovich. He had arrived early that morning with "nothing but his empty violin case", on direct orders from his former teacher and old friend, Victor Danchenko. Turns out that Mr. D. had been in the shop just the week before and played all the instruments in that same vault, and as soon as he came across the Vuillaume, as I understand, he immediately whipped out his phone and called Igor. "Igor--you MUST get this violin! It is PERFECT!!" (Having spent two ENCORE summers in his studio I must admit, I can totally picture him doing that.)

We then proceeded to put on a free concert: we went into the weird little recital hall next door and first Igor played my Moretti, and I noticed that it sounded just as good if not better in the audience as it did under my ear. Then he played the Vuillaume--the standard opening of the Tchaikovsky concerto, opening of the Brahms, first page of Tzigane to check the G-string--and then we looked at each other and I swear he winced. It didn't have the clarity of the Moretti, and the sound choked up high on the G. Uh-oh.

But then, we were treated to an exhibition of the finest wizardry for miles around. Both Peter and Dan Prier are complete geniuses when it comes to instrument setup, and they can move a soundpost or bridge literally a tenth of a millimeter in just the exact right direction and turn a hunk of wood into a singing nightingale.

Yes, it's late at night and my poetic excesses are beginning to assert themselves, but trust me--a few precision-aimed whacks with a soundpost-mover-thingy, and the Vuillaume sprang to life. (Adding to the situation, of course, was the fact that the poor Vuillaume hadn't been played since 1978.) After noodling around a bit more, Igor asked me to play the Vuillaume so he could hear it from the audience.

Uhhh. Right, OK, you just played like a god and now you expect me to get up there and follow your performance.

Thankfully, my inner stage hog took over. I played some Tzigane, a few of the Romanian Folk Dances, a bit of Debussy, a bit of Dvorak and some Bruch. (After I'd played the exposition of Tzigane, I distinctly heard Igor mutter to himself "Oh right, so that's how that passage goes!" and my mild case of nerves vanished.) One thing that we both noticed immediately is that the Vuillaume likes a rather light touch, a fast, springy bow, and not too much weight into the string--in short, it likes a French violinist. I wouldn't think it would suit a very Russian player like Igor so well, but apparently it does. (Igor--are you reading this? How's the fiddle treating you?)

Anyways, I assume he left with the Vuillaume stashed safely in his erstwhile empty violin case; I certainly left with the Moretti enclosed in mine (and my old violin being schlepped along by my mom in a ratty old spare case that looked like it had been through the war.)

So, that's my bizarre saga. Who knew? Anyway, I love the violin and I'm totally going to nail my seating auditions with it at Oberlin next month...knock wood...