66. Stradivarius Violins

Summary

Episode 66: Stradivarius Violins

Released on October 14, 2024 | Host: Zachary Crockett | The Economics of Everyday Things

Introduction: The Allure of Stradivarius Violins

In this episode, host Zachary Crockett delves into the fascinating world of Stradivarius violins—some of the most coveted and valuable instruments in existence. These violins, crafted by the legendary Antonio Stradivari over 300 years ago, continue to captivate musicians, collectors, and investors alike with their unparalleled craftsmanship and enduring legacy.

Frank Almond and the Lipinski Stradivarius

Zachary Crockett introduces Frank Almond, a renowned professional violinist from Wisconsin, who serves as the steward of the Lipinski Stradivarius, a violin valued at nearly $6 million. Frank shares his deep connection with the instrument:

Frank Almond [03:12]: "You can imagine, like, the capital gain on that if you're not a musician with a top. At that time, we strongly advised them not to get rid of it if they didn't have to."

Frank recounts how he acquired the Lipinski through a serendipitous email 16 years prior, highlighting the unpredictability and rarity associated with acquiring a Stradivarius.

The Genius of Antonio Stradivari

The episode explores the history and genius of Antonio Stradivari, the master luthier from Cremona, Italy. Frank Almond provides insight into Stradivari's innovative approach:

Frank Almond [04:57]: "There was no, like, laser cutting back then. Everything was done by hand in his workshop. And because he was so famous and so wealthy so early in his career, he was able to afford materials to make these instruments that a lot of his competitors were not."

Stradivari’s meticulous craftsmanship and access to superior materials set his instruments apart, laying the foundation for their enduring excellence and high market value.

Rarity and Value: The Economics of Stradivarius Violins

The discussion shifts to the economics surrounding Stradivarius violins. With fewer than a thousand ever produced and only about 500 remaining today, their scarcity significantly drives their value. Frank Almond emphasizes:

Frank Almond [16:22]: "That's one of the fundamental questions that people usually have when his name comes up. What's the big deal? Why are they so expensive? ... They're these really amazing functional antiquities. They really are better than almost anything that you would play in your lifetime."

The episode highlights how factors like acoustic engineering, unique materials, and historical significance contribute to their premium status.

Rare Violins of New York: Guardians of Excellence

Ziv Arazi and Bruno Price from Rare Violins of New York provide an insider’s perspective on the trade and preservation of these magnificent instruments. They discuss the balance between treating violins as investments and ensuring they remain in the hands of talented musicians:

Ziv Arazi [07:47]: "The real record breaking sales are done privately through dealers. But those are the sales that no one hears about because most times people like their privacy."

The firm not only brokers high-value sales but also fosters programs like Inconsortium, which matches instrument owners with promising artists to ensure these violins continue to be played and cherished.

Investment Potential and Market Dynamics

Exploring the investment side, Ziv Arazi explains the steady appreciation of Stradivarius violins:

Ziv Arazi [08:30]: "40 years was about 8% a year."

Bruno Price adds that despite market fluctuations driven by the popularity of certain musicians, the long-term trend for these instruments remains robust. The exclusivity and limited supply inherently sustain their value.

Instrument Loans: A Symbiotic Relationship

The program Inconsortium is detailed, showcasing how instrument loans benefit both the owners and the musicians:

Ziv Arazi [09:47]: "The main function for us is to really try to find the next custodian for those great instruments that are in our care and make sure that the next owners understand the need for them to still be used by musicians."

These loans not only enhance the musicians' performances but also contribute to the instruments' increasing prestige and market value as they become associated with rising stars.

Security and Theft: Protecting Priceless Assets

Frank Almond shares a harrowing experience involving the attempted theft of the Lipinski Stradivarius:

Frank Almond [18:46]: "So I'm trying to put my violin in the back seat and this guy walks around. It was really hard to see him. And he just at the very last second, I saw these little flashing lights and he shot me with a Taser. And I was back up very, very quickly in time to see the van driving around the corner and the violin was gone."

Thanks to the intervention of a classical music-loving police chief, the violin was recovered within nine days, underscoring the high stakes and the lengths involved in safeguarding these invaluable instruments.

The Extended Lifespan of Stradivarius Violins

Reflecting on the enduring legacy of these instruments, Frank Almond muses:

Frank Almond [22:05]: "We always think that these things are passing through our lives, but really it's the other way around. I mean, you're just another kind of blip in its life. It's going to be around a lot longer than I will, most likely today."

This perspective highlights the timeless nature of Stradivarius violins and their continuous influence across generations.

Conclusion: More Than Just Instruments

The episode wraps up by emphasizing that Stradivarius violins are more than mere musical instruments; they are cultural treasures that embody centuries of artistry, history, and economic significance. Through personal stories, expert insights, and intriguing anecdotes, Zachary Crockett paints a comprehensive picture of why these violins remain unparalleled in both their artistic and economic value.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Frank Almond [04:57]: "Everything was done by hand in his workshop. And because he was so famous and so wealthy so early in his career, he was able to afford materials to make these instruments that a lot of his competitors were not."

• Ziv Arazi [07:47]: "The real record breaking sales are done privately through dealers. But those are the sales that no one hears about because most times people like their privacy."

• Frank Almond [22:05]: "We always think that these things are passing through our lives, but really it's the other way around."

Key Takeaways:

• Historical Significance: Stradivarius violins are treasured not only for their exceptional sound quality but also for their rich history and the legacy of Antonio Stradivari.

• Economic Value: Their scarcity and the meticulous craftsmanship contribute to their high market value, making them desirable both as instruments and as investments.

• Preservation Efforts: Organizations like Rare Violins of New York play a crucial role in maintaining the legacy of these instruments by facilitating their use by top musicians and ensuring their preservation.

• Security Concerns: The high value of Stradivarius violins necessitates stringent security measures to protect them from theft and damage.

For those unfamiliar with the intricate world of Stradivarius violins, this episode offers an enlightening exploration into why these instruments continue to hold such esteemed positions in both the musical and economic landscapes.

Transcript

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[Zachary Crockett]

A few weeks ago, I talked to a guy who's been extremely lucky twice.

[Frank Almond]

Hi, Zach, I'm Frank.

[Co-host]

Hey, Frank. How's it going?

[Frank Almond]

Okay.

[Zachary Crockett]

Frank Almond is a professional violinist in Wisconsin. He was concert master for the Milwaukee Symphony for 25 years. He also performs in chamber ensembles and has made a number of recordings. I'd reached out to Amand because he plays a Stradivarius violin.

[Co-host]

It's nicknamed the Lipinski, a tribute to one of its many previous owners, and it's worth nearly $6 million.

[Frank Almond]

The Strada is just gorgeous. It's like this Lamborghini sitting there.

[Co-host]

The music in this episode is from a series of albums that Amen recorded called A Violin's Life. The series is inspired by the history of the Lipinski.

[Frank Almond]

It was made in 1715, which is sort of dead in the middle of what most people consider Stradivari's quote unquote, golden period, where he was really at the height of his powers.

[Co-host]

When you're playing an instrument like that, do you sort of feel the weight of the history in your hands?

[Frank Almond]

I certainly did with Lipinski from the second I got it because it was so well documented. It really was like a novel. So many famous people and figures in history were associated in one way or another with this violin.

[Zachary Crockett]

How exactly did the Lipinski end up in Amin's hands? It started with a mysterious email 16 years ago.

[Frank Almond]

It was like, we have this instrument and it's part of an estate situation and we're looking for advice on what to do with it. It was, you know, a one paragraph thing. And I mean, all of us get these things a couple times A year I found my Stradivari at a garage sale. Or, you know, it's been in my family for 25 years. And it's got a Stradivari label on it. So it must be a Stradivari. And 99% of the time, it doesn't work out for him.

[Zachary Crockett]

This time it did. A violin dealer accompanied Amin to the bank vault where the instrument was being held. He opened the case and quickly knew it was Lipinski.

[Frank Almond]

You can imagine, like, the capital gain on that if you're not a musician with a top. At that time, we strongly advised them not to get rid of it if they didn't have to. Like, how often does estrad sort of drop out of the sky into the city of Milwaukee? Eventually it wasn't right away. She said, you know, what if you played it? You've had these things before. What if you looked after it? About two seconds later, I said, hey, that's a great idea. I think that's a really excellent plan moving forward. So I wound up with violin.

[Zachary Crockett]

For the Freakonomics radio network, this is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. Today, Stradivarius violins. Unless you're a wealthy collector or a very fortunate musician, Stradivarius violins are not the kind of thing you see or touch every day. But you've probably heard them when you've streamed a Mozart concerto or listened to a classical radio station in your dentist's waiting room. The bright, crisp resonance of these instruments means they're still used by the world's greatest players over 300 years after they were made. That longevity is a testament to the genius of a luthier named Antonio Stradivari. Stradivari grew up in the Italian town of Cremona. It was the center of the string instrument industry. As a young man in the 1660s, he began making and selling his own guitars. Cellos, violas, and especially violins.

[Frank Almond]

People think of Antonio Stradivari as kind of this old guy, like, at a bench carving stuff. And that's not really what it was. He took the existing model of instrument that was dominant at the time, which were these little kind of puffy baroque instruments, and gradually, over his entire lifetime, transformed it into something that no one had really ever experienced. Acoustically, it could be much more powerful.

[Zachary Crockett]

Again, that's violinist Frank Almond.

[Frank Almond]

There was no, like, laser cutting back then. Everything was done by hand in his workshop. And because he was so famous and so wealthy so early in his career, he was able to afford materials to make These instruments that a lot of his competitors were not.

[Zachary Crockett]

Three centuries later, Stradivari's violins are cradled by top performers. Joshua Bell, Maxim Vengorov and Sophie muttered Itzhak Perlman. They're on all the most celebrated concert stages. And yet fewer than a thousand violins ever came out of Stradivari's studio. Today there are maybe 500 of them left in the world.

[Frank Almond]

There's some dispute about how many instruments he actually made during his lifetime. But what is clear is that whoever bought them basically took care of them in a really careful way through generations.

[Zachary Crockett]

No one knows this better than Ziv Arazi and Bruno Price.

[Bruno Price]

I first met Ziv while he was still a student at Juilliard. And the plan was always at some point to have our own shop.

[Zachary Crockett]

Price and Arazi own a company called Rare Violins of New York.

[Co-host]

It's one of the nation's top antique instrument brokers. It sells loans out and repairs million dollar stringed instruments. And it works with some of the most famous artists in the world.

[Zachary Crockett]

Rare instruments are cherished by musicians and by investors, especially in recent years. In 2010, the soloist Anne Akiko Myers purchased the 1697 Molotor Stradivarius, which may once have belonged to Napoleon. It went for 3.6 million at the time, the most ever paid for a violin. Just a year later, a 1721 Stradivarius called the Lady Blunt sold at a Cherubi auction for more than four times as much. Erassian Price say those high profile auctions aren't the whole picture.

[Ziv Arazi]

The real record breaking sales are done privately through dealers. But those are the sales that no one hears about because most times people do like their privacy. So it becomes a very sort of hush hush transaction.

[Bruno Price]

It's a strange market because it's so emotional. There will always be periods where the values go up really quite dramatically for a specific type of instrument because soloist is using that particular maker and it becomes the hottest thing. But generally we find that the investment side going back over the last 30.

[Ziv Arazi]

40 years was about 8% a year.

[Bruno Price]

Year over year, yeah, around the 7 to 8% is actually a lot more accurate than some of our colleagues like to suggest.

[Zachary Crockett]

Most of the great instruments at Rare Violins of New York are held on consignment and kept in a high end climatized vault. As brokers. Arazian Price get a percentage when a sale is made.

[Ziv Arazi]

It ranges depending on the value of the instrument. On the lower end it would be 20% and on the higher end it would be a lot less 5% is standard.

[Zachary Crockett]

More than sales, though, they like to see that instruments they sell are still in the hands of musicians, not locked in a safe.

[Ziv Arazi]

What our goal in the process is to convert the investors into benefactors. It's the enjoyment from hearing the instruments on stage that really sort of pushes it beyond just an investment.

[Zachary Crockett]

Arazian Price created a program called Inconsortium.

[Co-host]

It matches instrument owners with promising artists.

[Ziv Arazi]

The main function for us is to really try to find the next custodian for those great instruments that are in our care and make sure that the next owners understand the need for them to still be used by musicians.

[Bruno Price]

At the very, very top end, as musicians are less able to afford the quality of instrument that they need, the actual buyers have changed. There are some individuals still buying, but sometimes now it's institutions or foundations. It makes it certainly a lot more complicated. There are more musicians today than there were 20 years ago and less really good violins available, and some institutions don't loan them out. And it's just a continued scarcity. That's really what it is.

[Co-host]

So that's maybe one of the incentives for the buyers to loan out the instruments they feel like they're playing. Sort of a creative and poetic role in the performance itself.

[Bruno Price]

Yes, very, very much so.

[Zachary Crockett]

Between a sponsor and a performer, even the financial benefits can flow both ways.

[Ziv Arazi]

If a young artist is building their name as a great artist, the instrument that they use will become more valuable because it's associated with them and consequently will sell for more money next time.

[Zachary Crockett]

The terms of these instrument loans are usually spelled out in a signed contract.

[Co-host]

Typically, the performer covers any required maintenance, but Frank Amend says those costs aren't too bad.

[Frank Almond]

Actually, most of these places that I've taken it to, they're so thrilled to be able to look at something and hold it and work on it that, you know, a lot of the time it's either a modest charge or you're paying for strings that need to be replaced or something like that.

[Co-host]

The performer also has to pay for insurance, which usually runs around two grand for each million dollars evaluation on the instrument.

[Frank Almond]

The premiums are generally not as bad as one would think, for the simple reason that usually things don't happen to them. It's actually a very low risk item.

[Zachary Crockett]

But that doesn't mean that the people who take care of them don't have worries.

[Frank Almond]

It's like having a child with you, just a really expensive child. My biggest fear was to do something stupid with it. The idea of a theft had occurred to me, but it was so dumb that I never really took it that seriously.

[Zachary Crockett]

That's coming up.

[Co-host]

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[Zachary Crockett]

Violins are famous the world over. Even people who don't listen to classical music have heard of them.

[Co-host]

But the musicians who prize them, like Frank Almond, are often asked what it is that makes them so special.

[Frank Almond]

That's one of the fundamental questions that people usually have when his name comes up. What's the big deal? Why are they so expensive?

[Zachary Crockett]

The obvious answer is that their value comes from their scarcity, amund says. There's more to it than that.

[Frank Almond]

They're these really amazing functional antiquities. They really are better than almost anything that you would play in your lifetime.

[Zachary Crockett]

The sound of a violin is largely determined by its engineering and materials. The front and back plates are made from spruce and maple, respectively. People have long speculated about the special density of Stradivari's wood and how it was treated. Some consider the impact of the varnish he used, a mixture of honey, egg whites and gum arabic from sub Saharan trees. In 2006, a biochemist at Texas A and M found that the top craftsmen from Cremona had soaked their wood in borax, zinc, copper, alum and limewater to protect against wormholes and fungus. This might have conferred other properties.

[Frank Almond]

People talk about the varnish or the kind of wood he used or, you know, the expert engineering that was involved with it. And a colleague of mine who's a spectacular violinist named James Ennis also has a 1715 Strad. And he, I thought, put it in great terms. It's not the varnish, it's not the wood. It's like a thousand different things that all came together.

[Zachary Crockett]

Many of the Stradivari that have survived this long have had some adventures. A 1732 violin called the Duke of Alcantara may have been absentmindedly left on top of a car after a 1967 rehearsal. It was found on the side of a Los Angeles freeway by a Spanish teacher and brought into a violin shop 27 years later. After the teacher's death, Yo Yo Ma left his cello in a New York City taxi cab in 1999. And some instruments have been caught up in even more drama, like what Frank Almond and the Lipinski experienced one winter night in 2014 after a chamber performance in Milwaukee.

[Frank Almond]

I was walking in my car and I see this van backed in to the parking space next to my car. And this is like Scooby Doo level, right? So I'm trying to put my violin in the back seat and this guy walks around. It was really hard to see him. And he just at the very last second, I saw these little flashing lights and he shot me with a Taser. And I was back up very, very quickly in time to see the van driving around the corner and the violin was gone.

[Zachary Crockett]

This is where Amand had his second stroke of luck. The city's chief of police was a huge classical fan and had served on the board of the Milwaukee Symphony.

[Frank Almond]

And I knew this guy. He understood the magnitude of it, like, right away. To him, this was like Jeffrey Dahmer level. And all of a sudden, instead of one squad car, there were, you know, 10 and an ambulance that I didn't want and forensics guys and lights. So that was a huge part of the equation in the end, because he threw at it. And that's why they were able to find it in nine days. But those nine days were way longer than nine days, if you know what I mean.

[Zachary Crockett]

The Milwaukee Symphony offered a hundred thousand dollars reward for the return of the violin.

[Frank Almond]

The whole world was looking for these guys. And in the end, it turned out after all this craziness, it turned out they'd planned this thing for three or four years, which, that's even weirder because it hadn't occurred to them. Apparently what you do with it after.

[Zachary Crockett]

You steal it, maybe the smartest thing you can do is just hold on to it. That's what the thief of the Ames Stradivarius did. It was taken from the Cambridge, Massachusetts office of famed violinist Roman Totenberg in 1980 by an aspiring musician who was.

[Co-host]

Seen in the hallway. Here's Ziva Razi and Bruno Price from Rare Violins of New York.

[Bruno Price]

Everybody knew pretty much who must have stolen it, but it disappeared for 35 years.

[Ziv Arazi]

It's not as if someone could just walk into a shop with a very famous Strad and say, I would like to sell this, because it will be very immediately known that it's stolen.

[Bruno Price]

I like the story with the lady bringing in the Totenberg, the Ames Stradivari, to the dealer and said, well, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is it's a Stradivari. The bad news is it was stolen and I have to call the police.

[Zachary Crockett]

The Totenberg family did get the Ames.

[Co-host]

Back, and Frank Amond, he was reunited with the Lipinski too.

[Zachary Crockett]

Through an anonymous tip. The thieves were apprehended and after two more days of searching, the violin was found wrapped in a baby blanket inside an old suitcase in an attic crawlspace.

[Frank Almond]

You know, to this day, according to the FBI, it's the only targeted high end instrument, armed robbery on record.

[Co-host]

I guess it's another notch in the violin's crazy history, right?

[Frank Almond]

Yeah, we always think that these things are passing through our lives, but really it's the other way around. I mean, you're just another kind of blip in its life. It's going to be around a lot longer than I will, most likely today.

[Zachary Crockett]

Frank Almond is still the steward of the Lipinski Stradivarius.

[Frank Almond]

Yes. Although I'm not the owner, I am technically still looking after it. I'm quite aware that it could go away at any time and something I think about, you know, but what are you going to complain?

[Co-host]

Did your insurance costs go up after the theft?

[Frank Almond]

No, amazingly, in fact, the value of the instrument itself went up about a million dollars.

[Zachary Crockett]

For the economics of everyday things, I'm Zachary Crockett.

[Co-host]

This episode was produced by Sarah Lilly and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Dalvin above.

[Zachary Crockett]

Bawaji.

[Co-host]

You'Ve been in possession of this instrument for a decade now. Have you ever had a desire to own it? Or is playing it enough of a reward for you as a musician?

[Frank Almond]

Well, if anybody's listening that wants to, you know.

[American Express Representative]

The Freakonomics radio network, the.

[Frank Almond]

Hidden side of everything.

[American Express Representative]

Stitcher.

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[Zachary Crockett]

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