A spiritual CONNECTION

Even for one of the most revered violinists, it is a daunting task to get to know twelve of the world’s finest Stradivaris, many with jaw-dropping pasts, within only a few weeks. Janine Jansen talks to Pauline Harding about how she did just that for a new recording and documentary

Standing on a boat racing across the water, hair blowing in the wind, with an electric twinkle in her eye, Dutch violinist Janine Jansen is captured by the camera crew for her new documentary, Janine Jansen: Falling for Stradivari. She is on her way to Stockholm, from her Swedish island home, to rehearse with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and afterwards to begin an adventure that she may be the only person ever to undertake: to play and record an album on twelve of the most celebrated Antonio Stradivari violins in the world. ‘It was Beare’s that came up with the idea,’ she tells me several months later, in a phone call between rehearsals. ‘They proposed it to me and they picked the instruments.’ The first two – the c.1699

‘Haendel’ and the 1717 ‘Tyrrell’ – she was able to try that day in Stockholm, alongside two bright-eyed students who, sharing this start to her adventure, were also permitted to play on them. A few weeks later, she flew to the UK to meet the remaining violins – the c.1680 ‘Captain Savile’; 1710 ‘Vieuxtemps, Camposelice’; 1715 ‘Alard, Baron Knoop’; 1715 ‘Titian’; 1716 ‘Milstein’; 1718 ‘San Lorenzo’; 1722 ‘de Chaponay’; 1733 ‘Kreisler, Huberman’; and 1734 ‘Lord Amherst of Hackney, Kreisler’ (see pages 30–32) – at the J.&A. Beare workshop in London.

‘I FELT LIKE I WAS CONNECTED TO THOSE LEGENDS FROM THE PAST. I WAS BRINGING ALIVE THE SAME VOICE. IT WAS OVERWHELMING’

Jansen, a Decca artist with numerous accolades to her name, including the 2020 Herbert von Karajan Prize, the Netherlands’ state arts prize the Johannes Vermeer Award in 2018 and five Edison Klassiek Awards, is undoubtedly one of this century’s most exciting, revered violinists. The 43-year-old is no stranger to Stradivari: since 2020 she has played the 1715 ‘Shumsky, Rode’ violin, on loan from a European benefactor, and before that the 1707 ‘Rivaz, Baron Gutmann’, on loan from Dextra Musica, the 1727 ‘Baron Deurbroucq’, from Beare’s, and the 1727 ‘Barrere’, from the Stradivari Society of Chicago. Nevertheless, even for her this project was a daunting one. The twelve violins – which included ‘my “Shumsky”’, as she affectionately calls it – were selected by Steven Smith, managing director of Beare’s, as the best of the best. Several were once played by violinistic giants such as Fritz Kreisler, Nathan Milstein, Arthur Grumiaux, Henry Vieuxtemps and Pierre Rode, to audiences that have included Napoleon, Beethoven and Brahms. ‘It was just completely nuts to have twelve of the greatest instruments all together in a room!’ she laughs. ‘When I was playing them, I felt like I was connected to those legends from the past in some strange way. I was bringing alive the same voice. It was overwhelming, but I tried to be inspired rather than intimidated by the amazing history that I was holding in my hands.’

These twelve instruments were not easy to come by. Ordinarily they are kept in private collections, locked away in vaults or loaned out to players worldwide, so it was a challenge to bring them together, especially during a pandemic. In the short twoto three-week window that this was possible, Jansen was to try each instrument and choose repertoire to suit it, then rehearse and record with her pianist, soon-to-be chief conductor of the LSO Antonio Pappano. New issues, however, followed. ‘After five days I tested positive for Covid, so that made it even more complicated,’ says Jansen, who was forced to take three weeks off to recover. ‘It was not easy for me to get back in shape so that I could practise and get to know the instruments. With some of them it was tricky: I was limited to a few days or even hours, so it was a big challenge to find the characters and voices.’

Even if Jansen had been able to spend the intended time with the instruments, she admits that to find each violin’s voice during recording would have been just as difficult, because there was so little time to adjust between pieces. ‘With some, you play just a few notes and it’s almost like you’re meeting an old friend,’ she says. ‘My “Shumsky” was an old friend from the first notes I played on it. Others may be more shy, so you need to find your way in, to make them blossom – it can take time to find where the instrument starts to react, and where you actually kill the sound.’ On occasion, she had to replan her fingerings to adapt, or to take a different approach to articulation and vibrato than she would on her own violin.

Jansen admires her two favourite instruments of the set: her ‘Shumsky, Rode’, 1715 (left), and the rarely played ‘Alard, Baron Knoop’, 1715 (right), at Beare’s in London

UNA BURNAND

Jansen and Pappano put the violins through their paces during filmed rehearsals in London

JUSTINE WADDELL

‘YOU NEED TO FIND YOUR WAY IN, TO MAKE THEM BLOSSOM – IT CAN TAKE TIME TO FIND WHERE THE INSTRUMENT STA RTS TO REACT, AND WHERE YOU ACTUALLY KILL THE SOUND’

With the instruments that had been left unplayed in vaults in recent years, those voices themselves changed as Jansen got to know them. The 1715 ‘Alard, Baron Knoop’, which counts Joseph Joachim among its former players, had not been used for ten years and it had never, before Jansen, been recorded; the ‘Tyrrell’, too, is rarely played. ‘When you hear that piece of information before you have the instrument in your hands, you think, “That’s going to be difficult; it might be a bit closed,”’ says Jansen. ‘It wasn’t that way at all. The thing I noticed after playing the “Alard” for a few days was that the sound became even better. During the recording at Cadogan Hall, suddenly the sound became strong and heavy, and it started to buzz with this amazing sizzle.’ As its power grew, she had to find a way to control it, and it is fascinating to watch her react to that sound, and also to the brightness of the ‘Haendel’ E string, the ease of the ‘Vieuxtemps’, and the qualities of each other instrument, as the documentary progresses. She assures me that there were no disappointments – only some instruments that inspired her more than the others. ‘If I had to pick a few, I think that the “Shumsky”, the “Alard” and the “Tyrrell” were the ones that really stood out,’ she says. ‘But I feel guilty even for saying this, because they are all really very special.’

Of course, the way a violin responds has to do with more than just the instrument itself, and so Jansen experimented with strings and bows to find out how best to bring each violin alive. As a result, the recording features an assortment p.35 of Thomastik Rondos, Dominants and Peter Infelds, and Pirastro Evah Pirazzis – string brands that she is used to, and that she felt matched each instrument. ‘It makes such a difference,’ she says. ‘Of course, I’m used to playing a certain type of string, with a particular speaking quality, but it also depends on the character of the violin. Sometimes an instrument doesn’t need an extra-beautiful, warm string, because it is already warm and it just needs more clarity.’ Her two bows also had a dramatic effect. ‘It was interesting how everything changed,’ she says. ‘The “Alard” is quite extraordinary: it has an amazing richness and warmth, but it also has this extra gear. Even when you think it cannot give any more, it’s just like’ – she makes a sound like a revving sports car – ‘it goes! And my Dominique Peccatte bow, which is quite strong and heavy, worked very well with that instrument. My Persoit is lighter and brings out more overtones, but actually with the “Alard” it didn’t give enough. It didn’t help to lift the violin – it made it a little bit closed.’ With the ‘Captain Savile’ she found the opposite. ‘That violin is much more vulnerable, more intimate,’ she says. ‘It has a beautiful sound, but that strong bow crushes it. The Persoit lifts the sound and really makes the instrument breathe.’

UNA BURNAND

THE TWELVE STRADIVARIS and Jansen’s chosen repertoire

1 ‘Captain Savile’, c.1680. R. Schumann: ‘Zart und mit Ausdruck’ from Fantasiestücke op.73 (arr. violin and piano)

2 ‘de Chaponay’, 1722. Ravel transc. Catherine: Vocalise-étude en forme de habanera

3 ‘Titian’, 1715. Tchaikovsky arr. Auer: ‘Mélodie’ from Souvenir d’un lieu cher op.42

4 ‘Kreisler, Huberman’, 1733. Heuberger arr. Kreisler: ‘Midnight Bells’ from Der Opernball; Kreisler: Liebesleid from Three Old Vienna Dances

5 ‘Vieuxtemps, Camposelice’, 1710. Vieuxtemps: Désespoir from Trois romances sans paroles op.7

6 ‘Milstein’, 1716. Rachmaninoff: Andante from Cello Sonata op.19 (arr. violin and piano)

7 ‘San Lorenzo’, 1718. C. Schumann: Andante molto from Three Romances op.22

8 ‘Alard, Baron Knoop’, 1715. Suk arr. Kocián: Song of Love from Six Piano Pieces op.7

9 ‘Shumsky, Rode’, 1715. Tchaikovsky arr. Auer: ‘Whither, ah! Whither Are Ye Fled’, Lensky’s aria from Eugene Onegin; Kern arr. Pappano: ‘Yesterdays’ from Roberta

10 ‘Tyrrell’, 1717. Elgar: Sospiri op.70 (arr. violin and piano)

11 ‘Lord Amherst of Hackney, Kreisler’, 1734. Falla arr. Kreisler: ‘Danse espagnole’ from La vida breve; Kreisler Syncopation

12 ‘Haendel’, c.1699. Szymanowski: ‘La fontaine d’Aréthuse’ from Mythes op.30

See page 32 for more information about the instruments

BACKGROUND TO THE INSTRUMENTS

The twelve violins were chosen for their illustrious histories, the quality of their workmanship, and because they represent output from Stradivari’s early to later years. Below is a glimpse into their provenances

1 The ‘Captain Savile’, c.1680, is named after an amateur violinist in the British Army Rifle Brigade, who bought it in 1900. Its first known sale was in 1852, by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume. Later owners include Helen Manheim, a pupil of virtuoso Jenő Hubay, from c.1912; and New York College of Music director Arved Kurtz, from 1959. Despite its early date, the skill with which it was made ‘almost can’t be bettered’, says Smith.

2 The ‘de Chaponay’, 1722, was owned by the noble de Chaponay family, near Lyon, France, then bought by a silk merchant in 1876 and, in 1903, by Brighton-based collector, ophthalmic surgeon and Royal Academy of Music director Charles Oldham. It has since remained in a private collections.

3 The ‘Titian’, 1715, is named for its hue, which resembles the red-orange in Titian’s paintings. Violinist Efrem Zimbalist bought it for $33,000 in 1922; and for four decades from 1926, New York’s Warburg family loaned it out to players including Arthur Grumiaux. It is now played by Taiwanese-American violinist Cho-Liang Lin.

4 The ‘Kreisler, Huberman’, 1733, made by an 89-year-old Stradivari, was purchased by Kreisler on the eve of World War I and sold in 1937 to virtuoso Bronisław Huberman. ‘The form of the violin is absolutely glorious, slightly fuller in the arching than in the golden period, with a darker sound,’ says Smith.

5 The ‘Vieuxtemps, Camposelice’, 1710 – which to Jansen plays ‘like a Ferrari’ – belonged to Vieuxtemps from c.1870. Later owners included the French Duke and Duchess of Camposelice, and a German lawyer and amateur violinist, Leopold Geissmar. It travelled to London with Geissmar’s daughter, Berta, when she fled Nazi Germany and became an administrator of the London Philharmonic.

6 The ‘Milstein’, 1716, was owned in the late 1800s by the Böselangers, German nobles later involved in the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler (1944). Henry Goldman of the Goldman- Sachs family bought it in 1911; it then nearly met its end in Finn Harry Wahl’s collection in Vyborg during Russia’s 1939–40 Winter War, but was rescued by violinist Onni Suhonen. Milstein bought it in 1945, and it is now owned by the Terry and Jerry Kohl Foundation, Los Angeles.

7 The ‘San Lorenzo’,  1718, has painted on its ribs ‘Gloria et divitiae’ and ‘in domo eius’, possibly in reference to the Book of Psalms Chapter 111 line, ‘Glory and wealth shall be in his house and his justice remains for ever and ever.’ It was commissioned as a wedding gift for Mauro D’Alay (c.1687–1757), a renowned violinist–director from Parma who played for King Philip V of Spain and probably worked with Tartini and Vivaldi. The violin was later owned by Viotti, and from c.1823, by the Third and Fourth Dukes of San Lorenzo. Since 2016 it has been in the Munetsugu Collection, Tokyo.

8 The ‘Alard, Baron Knoop’, 1715, is, to Beare’s, one of ‘the most beautiful, well-preserved Stradivari violins in existence’. In 1870 Vuillaume gave it to his son-in-law, Jean-Delphin Alard, who taught Sarasate. Vuillaume’s 1865 copy of the instrument is played by Hilary Hahn. The ‘Alard’ was later in the collection of the German Baron Johann Knoop, from a wealthy family of cotton merchants, and counts Joachim among its players.

9 The ‘Shumsky, Rode’, 1715, was owned by Rode, pupil of Viotti, soloist to Napoleon and dedicatee of Beethoven’s op.96 Violin Sonata (1812). The great violinist Oscar Shumsky, who called it ‘love at first sound’, bought it in 1946. Even after trying all the other Strads, this one – which she currently has on loan – is still Jansen’s favourite.

10 The ‘Tyrrell’, 1717, is, according to W.E. Hill & Sons, ‘among the best existing examples of the maker’, and is still in ‘nearly pristine condition’, say Beare’s. It is named after a remembrancer of the City of London Corporation, Edward Tyrrell, who bought it in the mid-19th century. Since then it has passed to collectors including Gerald Segelman (1899–1992), an eccentric recluse who stacked valuable instruments away in his tiny London flat. Today it remains in a private collection and is rarely played.

11 The ‘Lord Amherst of Hackney, Kreisler’, 1734, made by Stradivari aged 90, was described by the Hills as the finest late-period Strad they had seen. From 1872 it was owned by British politician and art collector Lord William Tyssen- Amherst, a key figure in the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Kreisler bought it in 1936 and took it to the US with him in 1939. In the 1950s it was played by a student of Auer’s, Benno Rabinof.

UNA BURNAND

12 The ‘Haendel’, c.1699, was owned by a German-Italian painter, Cesare Mussini, and various collectors, before Ida Haendel. In her book Woman with Violin (1970), she wrote that it was ‘as precious to me as a limb. I had found my “mate” in this beautiful instrument.’ She played it for several decades, until her death in 2020.

Jansen swaps instruments, sometimes phrase by phrase, as she tries to match them with repertoire

‘IT MAKES THE HEAD EXPLODE! IT STA RTS SPINNING, BEC AUSE YOU CANNOT ALWAYS JUDGE THE SOUND WHEN THE VIOLIN IS RIGHT NEXT TO YOUR EAR’

To coax individual characters from twelve different violins, using two different bows and multiple sets of strings, could for many people cause sensory overload. Didn’t this all, I ask, make her feel as though her head might explode? ‘Of course it makes the head explode!’ she laughs. ‘It starts spinning, also because you cannot always judge the sound when the violin is right next to your ear. That’s why it’s so important to have great ears there with you. Tony Pappano is a wonderful musician and he has the best ears, and so do the wonderful people at Beare’s, so they could really help me judge what worked best.’

This wasn’t only useful for judging which bows and strings to use; it was also vital when it came to choosing repertoire. In the documentary, we see Jansen and Pappano try one violin on the first part of a piece, and another on the second, and so on, until they are happy they have found the perfect match. How well does the ‘Alard’ suit Brahms’s ‘FAE’ Sonata scherzo, they ask? And how about playing Clara Schumann on the ‘Captain Savile’, with its chiaroscuro, serene sound – or Robert Schumann instead, perhaps? Would Elgar suit the human, cantabile voice of the ‘Tyrrell’? ‘Mine! My “Shumsky”!’ Jansen cries, for Kern’s ‘Yesterdays’. Now, she does allow something of the instruments’ history to creep forward in her mind, to give her little extra bursts of inspiration. On the soulful, warm ‘Kreisler, Huberman’, she and Pappano play Kreisler’s Liebesleid and arrangement of ‘Midnight Bells’, which the composer recorded on that same instrument almost a century earlier; for Kreisler’s Syncopation and arrangement of Falla’s ‘Danse espagnole’, they select his ‘Lord Amherst of Hackney’ for its dark sound colour and bite. For the ‘Milstein’ Stradivari, they transpose the Andante from Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata. ‘I had always thought that this slow movement might work on the violin, so we just took out the music and we starting sightreading it,’ Jansen tells me. ‘Milstein knew Rachmaninoff, of course, so maybe they even played it together. It felt like there was a special connection.’

One instrument to which Jansen felt particularly connected was Ida Haendel’s c.1699 Stradivari, because Haendel, who passed away only last year, is someone that Jansen greatly admired. ‘We only met once, after I played the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra in Florida,’ she says ‘Suddenly, after the concert, she was standing in my dressing room, this tiny little power woman! She was so sweet, and such an amazing violinist. Playing her instrument, knowing her recordings and hearing the brilliant, silvery E string on that violin made me feel emotionally connected to her. I felt quite clear that I wanted to use her violin for Szymanowski’s “La fontaine d’Aréthuse”, with its amazing colour world and lots of E string to shine and shimmer.’

Jansen and Pappano record on stage at London’s Cadogan Hall

Although Jansen and Pappano finished making their recording in November, and it was this September released by Decca, Jansen feels that she is still learning from her experience: it has increased her awareness and opened her ears, she says, inspiring her continually to adapt her sound. That is not to say that she would always like to have the ‘luxury’ of choosing a different world-class violin for every different piece that she plays. ‘I think I would go nuts!’ she says. ‘First of all, I am really in love with the “Shumsky”, which I feel fits everything. Of course, it was super attractive to play Vieuxtemps’s Désespoir on Vieuxtemps’s own violin. That piece’s desperation really demands this amazing strength in the sound, and the instrument is a bit like a Ferrari – it feels like brrrm! – it kind of drives off with you! But that would not be the violin that I would want to be with all the time. I wouldn’t be against spending more time with the “Alard”, if ever possible, but I wouldn’t want to have so many Strads lying around. I think it could mess me up, and anyway, how greedy would that be!’ Instruments, then, are a bit like husbands, I suggest: you should probably stick to one, or things could become very complicated. ‘Yes, exactly,’ she laughs. ‘Quite impossible.’

CHOOSING THE TWELVE STRADIVARIS

Steven Smith, managing director of J.&A. Beare, gives some insights into how he chose these dozen instruments, and outlines some of their special characteristics

Some of the violins in this project are among the greatest in existence, and their total value is an extraordinary amount of money: up to £200m. But this venture wasn’t just about gathering the best instruments in the world; it was also about the violins’ history, condition and who had played them (see page 32).

I chose the ‘Captain Savile’ because it is an exceptional, robust early Strad. It looks slightly plainer than the later violins, because Stradivari couldn’t obtain glamorous-looking woods in the early days, but its ribs have a nice, narrow flame. It is also a fantastic concert instrument and its craftsmanship almost can’t be bettered. Our other early instrument, the ‘Haendel’, can’t be compared in terms of condition, for instance, to the ‘Alard’ or the ‘Tyrrell’, but it’s a wonderful violin, and Janine had met Ida and wanted to have it on the record.

Stradivari’s golden-period violins are fabulous, powerful concert instruments. Each one has its own distinct and special character, but for me, the ‘Shumsky’ is one of the greatest-sounding Strads, and the ‘Alard’ and ‘Vieuxtemps’ are also exceptional. We were very fortunate to get the ‘Alard’: it is a beautiful violin, in extraordinary condition, with so much original varnish and a perfect shape and form. I also wanted the 1733 and 1734 violins for their association with Kreisler. Their purfling and edgework are not as perfect as the earlier Strads, but their form is glorious, with full arching and a darker, fuller sound –a cross between a golden-period Strad and a ‘del Gesù’. They’ve been played by such great musicians over the years and you can really hear that in the individual character of each instrument.

Smith with the ‘Alard’ and Jansen with the ‘Shumsky’, at Beare’s

Bringing the violins together was not easy. Beare’s has been working on a comprehensive publication about Stradivari’s instruments, and that was helpful when choosing the violins, but Covid made everything else very difficult. They had to be hand-carried from Japan, Sweden, Monaco, Switzerland and across the US, and in several cases we had to self-isolate at both ends of the journey. Of course, the pandemic also meant that there was less work for musicians, so it freed up violins that might not ordinarily have been available to us. There were still, however, some that we couldn’t get: in an ideal world I would have included the 1713 ‘Boissier, Sarasate’, 1716 ‘Messiah’, 1709 ‘Viotti’ and a few others. I had a wishlist of twenty, but in practical terms twelve was the ideal number for the recording.

We are very fortunate to have been able to complete this project, against the odds. At the end of the second day of filming, Janine tested positive for Covid and had to self-isolate in her hotel for two weeks. When she came out she was still so ill that she couldn’t even walk up and down the stairs of Cadogan Hall with a violin. I don’t know how she did it, but somehow she got up on that platform and battled through, with tremendous drive and passion.

INTERVIEW BY PAULINE HARDING

J.&A. Beare’s six-volume Antonio Stradivari: The Complete Works is due to be published early in 2022

RECORDING PHOTO JUSTINE WADDELL. STEVEN SMITH PHOTO UNA BURNAND