Building bridges with violins

Franjo Kresnik (left) with Carlo Schiavi in Berlin at the international craft fair in 1938

‘I feel a huge amount of nostalgia for Cremona and all the friends I left there – nostalgia that gets even stronger, even painful, when I think of the exhibition of ancient instruments, the sanctuary of Cremonese art… I feel a certain void inside me. I miss the artistic environment of Cremona.’

So wrote the doctor and violin maker Franjo Kresnik (1869–1943) in a letter dated 24 June 1937, a few days after the end of the International Exhibition of Ancient Cremonese Violin Making, the most important of the numerous events held in Cremona to mark the bicentenary of Stradivari’s death. The letter was addressed to Renzo Bacchetta, a journalist and scholar of violin making. That same year, Bacchetta published a study featuring profiles of the Italian violin makers who were active at the time of writing. This important information was gathered via detailed questionnaires that Bacchetta sent to makers and asked them to fill in. This primary source is extremely useful today when trying to piece together the history of Italian violin making in those years.

The Croatian city of Rijeka, where Kresnik lived and worked for most of his life, was historically fiercely contested on account of its position and deep-water port. From 1924 to 1945 it was part of the Kingdom of Italy and known as Fiume. Kresnik is therefore included in Bacchetta’s list of Italian violin makers, and his profile shows that as of 1937 he had made 35 violins, four violas and three cellos.

In the year of the Stradivari celebrations, Kresnik stayed in Cremona and played an important role in this extremely vibrant period, during which Stradivari and violin making were at the centre of attention both in the city and internationally. Kresnik helped to ensure that the city’s celebrations were a success, and he was also involved in the events that would lead to the foundation of the violin making school in Cremona in 1938. The profiles in the Bacchetta collection, now held at Cremona State Library, include one filled in by Carlo Schiavi, who trained in Rijeka in Kresnik’s workshop, and was the first violin maker appointed to teach at the violin making school in Cremona.

Rijeka and Cremona – two communities brought together by the violin and by the eclectic figure of Franjo Kresnik – are seeking to remember his creative work and research as well as the years that led up to the bicentenary celebrations and the founding of the violin making school. With this in mind, the Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral in Rijeka, the European Capital of Culture 2020, and the Museo del Violino in Cremona, are promoting an exhibition entitled ‘Violins Beyond Borders: Stradivari in Rijeka – Kresnik and Cremona’.

The exhibition, which will open on 6 December 2019 in the Croatian museum, will focus on violin making in the first half of the 20th century. As well as works by Kresnik, instruments by Schiavi and Pietro Tatar are being sent from Cremona, along with four instruments chosen from the winners of the 1937 modern violin making competition: two violins (by Igino Sderci and Gaetano Sgarabotto respectively), a viola by Ferdinando Garimberti and a cello by Vincenzo Cavani. There will also be documents and letters from the era, as well as documentaries produced by the Istituto Luce The exhibition will be enhanced by two Cremonese violins that inspired Kresnik in his work as a luthier and which he described in his texts – the 1734 ‘Prince Doria’ Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ and the ‘Lam ex-Scotland University’ by Stradivari from the same year.

This is a unique exhibition that strives in part to explore, through the lens of violin making, a period in contemporary history marked by an extremely complex geopolitical situation, particularly in the Croatia/Istria/Dalmatia region, where the violin, symbolising culture and music, created affinities and friendships that overcame political divides.