I just picked up a Romanian 1/2 size violin today. Some pictures of it follow. The label says it is made in Reghin Romania "MUSIKINSTRUMENTENFABRIK REGHIN" Lower on the label (not visible in pictures) it says: "I. P. Bv 40. Shining a snake light through the f-hole and using a mobile phone we managed to get a couple of shots of the bass bar and the violin's own little dust bunny. The sound post is not set straight and is making poor contact with the violins back. That will be one of the first thigs to fix. It also came with a full size bridge that was not even carved to fit the violin table. Label and dust bunny Bass bar and sound post Reghin is considered the city of violins in Romania. See https://reghincity.ro/en/places/reghin-city-of-violins-rouhij3chez2pg In contrast to the link above informing us that that Hora and Gliga are the only violin making companies in Reghin, there are apparently many, and here is just one of them. I am not sure who made th...
Eleena Sutton (Grade 6 ABRSM student) playing the University of Southampton 1931 violin in 2024 The Douglas Clitheroe (1931) University of Southampton violin is now restored and re-voiced. Initially, I thought the high arch of the violin table and corresponding steep angle of the fingerboard, which necessitated an unusually high bridge, required me to engage in the removal of a lot of wood from the new bridge that I cut from a blank and necessitated making it with enlarged kidneys and heart. My thinking was that the amount of wood in the bridge, pre-bridge surgery, would severely mute the sound of the violin. Knowing how much bridge wood to remove, where to remove it and when to stop removing it is a counter intuitive and also intuitively informed art informed by scientific trial and error experience. This work is done incrementally on the instrument using tiny wood files. The original bridge that came with the violin was tall also and had been thinned to a greater degree than st...
Click the video > below to see the poignant story of Bobbie's violin. For me personally the story of Bobbie dying in an RAF bomber in 1938 as the UK was rushing these planes into production to be ready for a war in Europe after Hitler annexed areas of the Czechoslovakia in that year resonated profoundly with Putin invading and annexing Ukrainian sovereign territory in Europe today. My daughter Eleena Sutton (who is 13) is - as of her performance yesterday - now the owner and custodian of "Bobbie's Violin". If it can be borrowed and played in the future by others to raise donations for Ukraine and the millions of invasion-displaced adults and children of Ukraine that would be a good thing. Maybe the BBC could have it played accordingly at the Proms? I am not sure, however, if the story of Bobbie's violin catches the imagination of others as it does me and his family - who have kept in touch after I won the instrument in an eBay auction earlier this year....
Comments
Post a Comment