Wrote Adam Baer, quoted in "A Violin From Hollywood’s Golden Age Aims at an Auction Record Played in 'The Wizard of Oz' and other classic films, Toscha Seidel’s Stradivarius could sell for almost $20 million" (NYT).
Baer dismissed the notion that the Hollywood pedigree of the “da Vinci” might curb its value at auction. While he conceded Seidel did not record the most intellectually rigorous music, he added that “the fact he was a Hollywood performer shouldn’t diminish the value at all.”
“He was a great classical musician before he came to Hollywood,” Baer added. “And ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is a pretty big deal.”
Here's Baer's article "The Sound of Tinseltown/Toscha Seidel made a nation fall in love with the violin" (American Scholar).
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5 comments:
So this is the bastard!
Long ago, I read that the cello is the closest instrument to the human voice--they probably meant male voice. Maybe the violin became prominent because it isn't.
The tone he achieves from the instrument is astonishing.
From the 1924 NYT article:
The history of Mr Seidel's Stradivarius is entirely known... as far back as 1886.... But back of that date its record has practically been blotted out.
I don't recall ever seeing that construction, 'back of that date', in print; surely most of us would say or write, 'before that date, before then'. A colloquial usage that made it past the editor?
The auction is being handled by Tarisio. We frequently get Tarisio catalogues in the mail (my husband has bought from them repeatedly), but the last one was just this Strad, lovingly and very beautifully photographed from many angles.
There was a song back in the day [edit: by George and Ira Gershwin] about "Mischa, Jascha, Toscha, Sascha." Mischa was Elman, and Jascha was of course Heifetz. Sascha was Sascha Jacobsen, whom I don't know, but the other three are legends. See
here.
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