The timeless beauty of a Stradivari
Joanna Pitman says owning a valuable Italian violin is doubly rewarding if it is played by a great musician
How many investments can bring you joy as well as financial gain? Unless pure lucre flows in your veins and you’re the sort of person for whom an excursion into the derivatives market is your greatest pleasure, then there are not many. Wine and art spring to mind, but one relatively underexploited investment opportunity that can bring pleasure on many levels is that of world-class violins. If the violin is a high-quality instrument, it will bring steady financial appreciation as well as the chance to enable a top-flight musician to conquer the world’s concert halls.
In the world of classical music, young and highly gifted musicians find it hard to lay their hands on the quality of instruments they need for a successful international career. The best violins, the ‘old masters’, were made in Cremona in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries; and of the finest makers of the era — Antonio Stradivari, Giuseppi Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ and Nicolò Amati — Stradivari is the best known. Almost without exception, the best violinists of the last 200 years have played on a Stradivari or a Guarneri del Gesù. ‘Italian instruments from the 18th century have always been the most sought after and still are today,’ says Simon Morris, managing director of the violin dealers J & A Beare. ‘It’s their ability to produce a range of colours as well as being able to project every nuance to the back of a hall that sets them apart from ordinary instruments.’ The finest instruments command millions of pounds. A year ago, an anonymous benefactor bought a 1743 del Gesù violin for £3.6 million to be lent to the leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Richard Tognetti. Any 18th-century Italian violin of quality will cost at least £50,000.
The best violins are also works of art in their own right but there are relatively few of them on the market. There are only 650 Stradivari and 100 del Gesù violins extant. As more are bought by museums and put behind glass, the supply is shrinking.
Forty years ago, a successful orchestral violinist might have earned enough to buy a fine Italian violin. But today it would cost 200 times as much and players’ incomes have fallen in relative terms — so for many, buying a good instrument is virtually impossible. Anyone who bought a good violin in the 1960s, however, almost certainly made an excellent investment. A good Stradivari that sold for $260,000 in the late 1970s was recently resold for $5 million.
Violins, more than other stringed instruments, occupy a unique place in the musicalinstrument investment market. Their value as antiques rises every year, but they are also highly sought after as tools of the trade. Unlike other instruments, the design of the violin has not been improved upon since Stradivari made the first known violin in 1666. Every now and then a scientist comes along claiming that a plastic violin can produce the same sound wave on an oscilloscope as a Stradivari, but generally the Italian old masters have always been the best and, unlike investments in art, violin investments have not been subject to the whims of fashion.
Good violins increase in value by about 10 to 12 per cent per year. That trend is likely to continue because the supply is finite and the demand is growing. The rising popularity of classical music in the Far East has pushed up prices. While an ambitious English parent will balk at spending £10,000 on a violin for a budding young player, a new-rich Asian parent will happily part with $200,000. The Japanese have been buying serious fiddles for years, the Koreans are moving rapidly into the market, and — as in any other sector you care to name — soon the Chinese will be investing too.
In many other countries foundations have been set up to fund the purchase of good instruments for young talented players, but this has not happened in Britain. As a result, many top players seek help from a benefactor to purchase an instrument and lend it to them. For example Kazuki Sawa, one of Japan’s most famous performers and a teacher at Tokyo Geidai conservatoire, plays on a del Gesù which was bought as an investment by a consortium of business investors in 1970 for £100,000. Professor Sawa put in a small sum himself. Today the instrument is worth about £2 million. When Sawa retires, his violin will be sold and the investors will receive their returns.
In London, Simon Morris handles these kinds of investments through his firm, J & A Beare, which also has offices in New York and Seoul and has been dealing in violins since 1892. Joshua Bell, Pinchas Zukerman, Nigel Kennedy, Vanessa-Mae, Yehudi Menuhin, Nathan Milstein and Isaac Stern are just some of the many valued clients of the firm, past and present.
‘It is a very rewarding relationship for both parties,’ he says. ‘Artist and benefactor often become good friends and it is common for the musician to play house concerts for their patron as a token of appreciation. The patrons enjoy contributing to the career of a wonderful musician. I think it brings far more rewards than hanging a picture on a wall, and the financial returns are steady and predictable.’ As with any investment involving large sums of money, a cautious approach is advised. Violin fakes are everywhere. Most violins have labels and many of them are misleading. Even as far back as 1685, the violinist Tomasso Vitali complained to the Duke of Modena that he had bought a violin at a price of 12 pistoles because the violin bore the label of Nicolò Amati, a maker of great repute. He complains that he discovered that the label was false, having found underneath it the label of Francesco Ruggieri, a maker of lower repute whose violins were not worth three pistoles. These days both Amati and Ruggieri are regarded as great Cremonese makers.
Many of the finest violins have nicknames and a provenance stretching back over centuries. The del Gesù nicknamed ‘the Cannon’, now in a museum in Genoa, is the violin reputedly played by Paganini when he was given it in 1802. If you’re thinking of investing in a top-class violin, it is crucial to check its condition and to have the guarantee of a certificate of its provenance and quality from a recognised expert such as J & A Beare. And if you’re concerned that a violin played by Paganini might be decreasing in value with age, then you needn’t, says Morris. ‘The sound of a violin improves with good use. The better its players have been, the better the sound it makes.’
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