Visit with Maestro Claudio Rampini

November 24, 2007 at 3:35 AM

What a Black Friday it was today! It's not that I woke up at 5:00 am and snagged the last HDTV nor did my friends all show up at my house with tons of turkey. Nope, it was much better than that. I had the privilege of a private violin appreciation session with Maestro Claudio Rampini, a luthier from Italy. Surrounded by so many fine violins, it was hard to contain my excitement on which violin to play first.

Imagine two Francesco Bissolottis, two Claudio Rampinis and one Luca Salvadori. A Zoom H2 portable recorder, a luthier, a dealer and moi. Perfect setting for a violin shootout. But we were more genteel and settled for back to back recorded excerpts of pieces I have been working on. Can one person overdose on violin sound? Or can I sustain so much heightened expressive emotion?

After 2 hours the violin that captured my heart was the new 2007 Rampini Toscano model. Now don't get me wrong, the other violins were no slackers, not at all. Each gave a healthy dose of sound, projection, response and character.

But the 2007 Rampini was special. It was penetrating and clear on the eing, while dark and ringing on the G string with a solid core in between. It was lightening quick, extremely responsive and had great clarity and articulation. I was very impressed, especially since it is a brand-new violin and I was only the third person to play it. Somehow Claudio had achieved violin making nirvana, how to get a brand new instrument to sound so crystal clear, focused, and penetrating. How to get the lower registers dark and luscious while the upper strings were responsive, supple and laser sharp. Golden mid-range, a pure silvery A string with not even a hint of nasalness usually associated with a new violin. The open expansive sound on the 2007 actually made a few of the other violins sound closed in comparison, even though they had been played in and ranged from 2003 to 2005. Okay, so still fairly new, but this Rampini is a sharp-shooter.

And how does it handle? It grabs the corners tightly, accelerates out the gate instantaneously, and responds to the slightest nuance. I was actually able to play the Tchaikovsky Scherzo faster and more accurately on this 2007 Rampini than on my own violin. It is that crisp and agile. All I can say is that whoever gets this violin is in for a treat. How about an early Christmas present? Someone's been real nice this year, right?

The visit didn't end with just violin playing though. Since I had been dabbling with the idea of making an instrument, I brought in a couple of scrapers I made, as well as a mandolin top from a kit. I was not sure of exactly how to turn a scraper, and Claudio was nice enough to show me how to do it. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my burnisher, so he had to demonstrate with a screwdriver. He turned a small burr and then showed me how to scrape a spruce top, as well as a maple back. I learned that you should always scrape in the direction of the grain with the spruce, but can scrape in any direction with the maple. Claudio prefers to use the flat edge of the scraper (0.012") thin, and bend it since it is flexible. He also told me that in some spruce, there is a natural direction of the grain and you must follow it. Sort of like when you brush your dog, you go in the direction the hair grows instead of against it.

It was a really happy day for me. And I'm glad I skipped the mall and the post Thanksgiving potlucks.

Here we are with the Rampini violins.