Doublestop Magazine

Cheating on a Violin?

The Wall Street Journal recently profiled violinist Nikolaj Znaider, and they focused on the instrument he is playing. Turns out his main squeeze (sorry, they started it) is a Stradivari (”Ex Liebig”), but he played a del Gesù (the “Ex Kreisler”) in a recent concert. Znaider turns out to be a very quotable musician:

“The first time I played the Ex Kreisler, I had known it for all of an hour and a half. If I feel an affinity, I don’t have any qualms. Once, in London, a violinmaker showed me a fine violin at five o’clock, and I said, why not take it on stage? The concert was at 7:30. Sometimes a string breaks and you have to take the concertmaster’s violin. It happens all the time. For the audience it’s a big drama. They love it, so you can’t lose. But it’s of no great importance or interest, any more than it is for a tennis player to break a string and change rackets.”

…and…

“My relationship to my instrument? It’s monogamy with episodes of forced promiscuity — those famous moments when a string breaks. In all walks of life there are different people. Among violinists, there are polygamists who have several instruments and enjoy switching. Anne-Sophie Mutter has two fine instruments. I think Itzhak Perlman also has two. Yehudi Menuhin had lots of violins and changed his main instrument regularly. Maybe there was an innate restlessness there — or maybe he didn’t ever find his real soul mate. Deep down, I’m a one-violin guy.”

Good stuff!