Grigora? Dinicu: Hora staccato
James Ehnes, Eduard Laurel
* Question (to anyone):
What is the most important part of the violin when looking for real true value/origin?
No taker for 5 days, wow... In any case, just ran into an acquaintance that does a lot of violin maintenance work for the local symphony orchestra and asked that question. He said a violin is just pieces of wood stuck together. Some of the pieces are essential to the identity of a specific violin. Some are consumable and can be modified/replaced if needed. For a violin to sound right/good, all the pieces must fit together in very specific way.
To somebody in the market for a high echelon violin, the first thing is probably to feel a strong bond to those underlying pieces that form the basis of the violin. Then one must work with a trusted luthier that knows how to get all the pieces set up properly so they sound right/good as a unit. There are many things that can be out of alignment in the initial setup and many things that can be done to fix it up, from simple things like moving the sound post/bridge, to making a new bridge, to a little more complicated things like reseating the neck/fingerboard work, then to really major surgeries. The luthier must be completely confident in the diagnosis and the remedy, and be honest about it.
After that, one work hard to get to know the personalities of the instrument well and work to unleash its full potential. There are many moving parts here. Ideally the money side shouldn't be much more than the lubricant. Unfortunately that's seldom the case in this world, especially as the dollar amount goes up.
In any case, the video above is from the DVD included in Ehnes' album
Homage, which is kind of a tribute to the David Fulton string instrument collection. The CD has performance using every instrument in the collection. The DVD has corresponding videos of those as well as a bunch of interviews with Ehnes covering the topics like the Fulton collection, working with a trusted luthier on setup, bows, etc.
Amazon Marketplace has a few copies at reasonable price. Recommended.
