A 1714 Stradivarius violin sold for $11.25 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York. While it does not set a world record for a musical instrument, it will still ensure a solid financial future for a new generation of musicians: the money will primarily be used to fund scholarships for young violinists at the New England Conservatory in Boston. According to Andrea Kalyn, the Dean of the conservatory, the violin was a valuable possession but it was time to sell it.
The 311-year-old instrument once belonged to Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, a close friend of composer Johannes Brahms; one of many instruments once owned by the Hungarian virtuoso, who premiered Brahms’s violin concerto in 1879. In 2015, following the death of the last owner, former student Si-Hon Ma, the violin—now known as the Joachim-Ma—was donated to the Boston conservatory with the understanding that it would eventually be sold to fund scholarships. Sotheby’s, in a detailed article about the instrument on its website, called it “a masterpiece of sound.”
The winning bid for the Stradivarius was nearly $5 million less than the $15.9 million record paid in 2011 for the Lady Blunt Stradivarius, named after Lord Byron’s daughter.
It is estimated that only around 600 instruments made by the Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari and his family between the late 17th and early 18th centuries survived, mostly in the hands of collectors.
Geneva Lewis, a student at the New England Conservatory, played the Largo from Bach’s Sonata No. 3 on the Joachim-Ma for those present at the auction, so they could appreciate its wonderful sound. As American violinist and musical director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in London, Joshua Bell, told NPR, Stradivarius violins offer their musicians “sound colors”: “It’s kind of the overtones and the way once you get to know the instrument, you can find these tonal varieties that are very difficult to find in a modern instrument.”
