Transcript
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Meg Bowles (2:20)
From PRX this is the Moth Radio Hour. Meg I'm Meg Bowles and in this hour we'll hear three stories told live on stage in Northampton, Massachusetts, New York City and Flint, Michigan. Our first storyteller, Frank Almond, is the Concert Master of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Frank is a professional violinist and has performed as a soloist in some of the world's most important music venues, including the Alice Tully hall at Lincoln center, where he told this story. The only difference this time he took the stage was without his violin. Here's Frank Almond live at the mock.
Frank Almond (2:58)
In 2008 I received an email. And the subject line was, a violin. And the sender went on to explain that they had in their possession a stradivarius violin from 1715, and it was part of an estate situation, and they were looking for some guidance. I'm a professional violinist and have had the good fortune to play any number of Stradivaria instruments for decades, all over the world, even in here a few times, as I recall. And the thing about Stradivarius, the mystique is not that they're 300 years old or that they're worth so much money. It's that there are these amazing functional antiquities, and they're powerful, and they're sonically nuanced, and they're perfectly crafted and engineered, and they have these amazing pedigrees and histories behind them. And this wasn't the first time I had received an email like this with someone that found their Stradivari. And it's always very disappointing to have to write them back and say, no, you're Stradivari violin is not from 1982, because he died in 1737. And this email was really different. It was full of all this information and detail that completely drew me in. And it even had a reference to a violin that I had heard about before called the Lipinski Stradivarius, named after a famous violinist in the 19th century that owned it. And this violin was from 1750 and had kind of disappeared for about 20 years. And I thought, I have to check this out. This is amazing. And I wrote them right back. And it turned out it was the owners writing me. And they were in the city where I was, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And they wanted to meet in a bank vault where they were storing the violin. And so I'm driving down to this bank vault, thinking, this bank vault is, like, three miles from my house. And I'm thinking, there's, like, maybe 250 of these things left in the world, more or less. And is it possible that one of these just dropped out of the sky into Milwaukee? It seemed very unlikely. And we get down to the bank vaults, and somebody brings in a violin case. And I open it up really slowly, and it's the Lipinski Stradivarius. And I was absolutely dumbfounded. Like I stumbled on some lost Rembrandt or something. And over the next couple months, this dialogue starts between the owners and myself. And this is what happens if you keep it. This is what happens if you sell it. This is what happens if you leave it under your bed. And we struck up a kind of connection, especially between myself and one of the owners. And one day I get a phone call, and she says, what if you play it? What if you look after it? You've had these things before, and we could come and hear it and see it if we're around, and it'd be great for the city. And, you know, what do you think about that idea? And I said, I think that's an excellent idea. That's a really good strategy going forward, and we should definitely make that happen. And a couple of days later, I'm driving home with the Lipinski Stradivarius strapped into the backseat of my car with its little seatbelt. And I get home and I take it up to my practice studio and I open it up and start playing it. And there's that sound and that power and nuance. And I set it down and I started thinking about it, and it's a little intimidating. It's not just the Lipinski thing. Like, nobody knows who Carol Lipinski is now, right? But in his day, in the 19th century, he was a hugely important cultural figure, figure and virtuoso violinist who was often compared to Niccolo Paganini, who was sort of the Eddie Van Halen of the violin. And I knew that on this actual violin, on at least two occasions, Lipinski and Paganini had done these giant spectacles where they would play one right after the other, and then the whole audience would vote on who was the better violinist. Like this 19th century violin smackdown. But it wasn't just that. Lipinski knew Mendelssohn, and he worked closely with Robert Schumann and all these other people that sort of drifted in and out of my life as a classical musician. And here it was in front of me, and I was starting to spend hours and hours with it. And it's this kind of odd relationship starts almost like a dating period where I'm putting my best artistic self forward with the hope that the violin has some kind of adaptive quality back. And my playing really did change a lot. And the violin changed a lot. And I realized really quickly that this object was capable of maximizing my artistic abilities to a degree I would have never possibly imagined. And at the same time could brutally illuminate all of my weaknesses as a violinist. And I started to play it more and more publicly. We settled into this sort of odd marriage, and people knew about the instrument and would come and hear it. And it was almost a matter of civic pride. For all the right reasons, I thought. In January of 2014, I was finishing a concert on a series I run in Milwaukee. And the last piece on the program was this incredible piece of chamber music called the Quartet for the End of Time. And it was written by a POW in France in World War II. And it's about an hour long. It's unbelievably intense, not just to listen to, but also to play. And we sort of tumbled out of the stage door. And I remember I had been really happy to get a parking space close to the stage door because it was cold. It was really cold, like 10 below zero. And I could get there very quickly to put the violin in its seatbelt. And as I'm walking to the car, directly in the space next to my car was a van. And it was backed in and it was running. And this is a weird van. This is not a quality vehicle. You know, this is like Scooby Doo level van. And I'm walking over, and this guy gets out of the van, and he walks around the front, and he's got this big fur coat thing on and a big fur hat. And he's getting closer and closer, and he's between where I need to be. And at the very last second, he opens up his jacket, and he's really close. And I see these little flashing lights. And I'm thinking, why is that guy taking my picture? And then I felt this unbelievable pain and paralysis. And I was on the ground, and then I wasn't on the ground because I was up and I was running in circles, and I was screaming, and I mean, I was really screaming. And I was screaming because as soon as I got up, I saw the Scooby Doo van drive around the corner. And I knew the violin was gone. And it was like somebody had ripped off one of my arms. And then I looked down, and there's these little fishhook things stuck in my body, like one in my chest area and one in my wrist. And I realized I'd been shot with a Taser. And So I called 911, and yes, it's a multimillion dollar instrument that was just stolen. And they shot me with a Taser. And could you please send a car quickly? And I waited and waited. And finally this lonely little squad car comes into the parking lot. And these two incredibly earnest beat cops start their initial interview with me in the backseat of the car. And lots of questions back and forth. And, you know, it's a violin, and it's worth how much? And how do you spell Stradivary? And finally, I'm getting a little agitated here. And I said, guys, you know, there's kind of a time factor. So maybe you could get on the radio and maybe try to find the van that's driving around with the violin inside of it. And they sort of looked at me and asked more questions, and everything just kept going like this. And I'm really going crazy. And I finally said, look, I know this sounds insane, but is there any way you could get in touch with the Chief of Police of the City of Milwaukee? Because he's a huge symphony fan. He goes all the time, and I've met him, and he knows the whole violin thing, and he'll get it right away. And they looked at me like, yeah, we'll get right on that. And another car came, and there were more questions back and forth. And I'm sitting there and somebody finally hands me a cell phone, and it's the Chief of Police, Ed Flynn. And I swear, within, like, one minute, there's this explosion of activity on the scene and police cars and forensics guys and lights and an ambulance and homicide detectives, like, they threw. They threw everything at this case instantly. And there was a part of me that. That's great, but I just. I couldn't get rid of this pit in my stomach. Like, it's gone, and I don't know what to think, and I'm tired, and I just wanted to get home. And I did get home early the next morning and made a phone call to the owners that I hoped I'd never have to make. And then this whole other level of crazy starts at my house over the next couple of days with media people on my lawn, and Good Morning America is calling my cell phone, and I did a polygraph test, and I'm doing hours long interviews with these homicide detectives, and everybody's into it and they're going to solve it. And all I could think of was, the violin is just gone. And I had this pit in my stomach and I had to get my life back. So a couple days go by, and I've got these concerts coming up in Florida, which is warmer, and I got a violin and decided I was going to go play these concerts. And so I fly down to Florida, and at the airport, a TSA guy pulls me aside and says, hey, you know, would you mind opening up your violin case? Because, you know, this guy got his violin stolen a couple of days ago, and he had a flyer with the Lipinski Stradivarius on it like it was somebody's lost cat or something. And I still had this pit in my stomach and. And I went and played the concerts. And I wound up in a strip mall bar in Florida. And it's bad drinks and bad karaoke. And I'm sitting there, and my phone's buzzing and buzzing, and it's all these unknown numbers. And I finally pick it up, and it's the chief of police. And he said, we found your violin, and it's okay. And it turns out that when you fire a Taser, all this stuff comes out. This little Taser chaff and these little bits of paper or whatever have all this identifying information on it for that particular weapon. And my personal Taser had been purchased a year earlier by a man named Universal Knowledge, his legal name. And he had bought it in his own name with his own credit card. And he had it shipped to his business, which was a barber shop. And he bought it with his friend as they decided how to pull off their masterful art heist of stealing a Stradivarius violin. And the violin had been found in a suitcase wrapped in a baby blanket. And apparently it was in pretty good shape. Also in the suitcase was the driver's license of the person that stole it. Next morning, I flew back to Milwaukee, and I drove right from the airport to where the owners were, and it was just the three of us. And there was some hugs and a few pictures and some tears. And I put the violin back in my backseat and put its little seatbelt on, and I drove home, and I took it up to my practice studio, and we sort of stared at each other for a little while. And my thinking had really shifted. And I realized that this thing's 300 years old, and this crazy saga is now part of its history, and it's going to be around for a long time. And I'm like this little blip. And the reality is I'm just passing through its life and not the other way around. Thank you.