Thanks LarryGreat video! You can really hear (and see) the differences. It also shows how long Stradivarius was a maker of great instruments. The so called 'Golden Age' of the Strad violins starts around 1700 to about 1730, but there were fine instruments made before and after.
We were fortunate to attend a private concert last June at J. and A. Beare's, the famed string store near Wigmore Hall in London. Jennifer Pike, the young British-Polish violinist demonstrated 3 Strads and 1 Guarneri del Gesu for us. One of the Strads was from the Golden Age. My favorites were the Golden Age Strad and the del Gesu. All were crazy expensive (5M GBP on the low end and 20M GBP on the high end). The cellist demonstrating the cellos is Pablo Ferrandez, the fine young Spanish cellist who has been given a long term loan of the Lord Aylesford cello.
These days many of the great instruments are owned by wealthy collectors or foundations (such as the Nippon Foundation which owns the Lord Aylesford cello and many other Strads) and they are on loan to promising young artists. The deals are normally for one year with the recipient responsible for paying for the insurance (or at least part of the insurance), and the loan continues by mutual agreement. In the old days (earlier in the last century, reasonably wealthly people could buy Strads and del Gesu instruments, and one of the Strads now owned by the Nippon Foundation was owned by one of my wife's colleagues who passed away a few years ago. He was a fair to middling amateur violinist who started buying rare violins more than 50 years ago, when they were still relatively affordable.
Strad cellos are much rarer than Strad violins.
Larry
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