Saturday, February 16, 2008

Poor Boy- Fall fractures $1M Fiddle!!!

David Garrett, a violinist tripped while carrying his 18th century violin while he was leaving from London's Barbarican Hall after a performance yesterday..Poor boy, after the great fall he found out that he had smashed his- a million dollar Guadagnini So, hopefully he can get it fixed or claim his insurance money to buy a new one (maybe a Stradivarius) So, for the new information for the day...do you know what is Guadagnini and Stradivarius??


Stradivarius is the most beautifully sounded violin manufactured by Antonio Stradivarius. It is also the most expensive violin in the world! There is no other violin that can be compared to this limited (only hundreds of it) Stradivarius sound. The credit goes to the type of wood used, some say it's the glue,the shape and lots more that we don't know. So there had been some attempt to reproducing the violin by Joseph Nagyvary, who is a biochemist. He managed to prove that he had found out the secret of Stradivarius violin when the violin he made (Nagyvary) only differs in small margin compared to Stradivarius's sound! Imagine how long he took to find it out! A Stradivarius costs several hundred millions to own..and the highest price ever paid for it was US$3,544,000...wow, look at how much people are willing to pay for a beautiful music and satisfaction. For a Stradivarius, it's worth the money.


A Guadagnini, on the other hand,is made by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, which is reffered as "poor man's Strads"....meaning the more affordable alternative to Stradivarius in 1970's . But now it's not cheap anymore, it's expensive too.


A Stradivarius...


A Guadagnini

Dr. Joseph Nagyvary and the violin he made (sounds very similar to a Stradivarius..such a genius)
And click here to compare a Stradivarius and Nagyvary sound.




References: Wikipedia and Yahoo! news.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

WoW!
I literally gasped reading the part that it was destroyed!
I played for 7 years and it was my dream to own one of those!
*sigh*