A Stradivarius violin crafted in 1714 sold for $11.25m (£9.1m) at a New York auction on Friday, missing the world record for a musical instrument that some predicted it might break, but still securing a solid financial future for a new generation of performers.
The 311-year-old instrument, listed by Sotheby’s of Manhattan as “a masterpiece of sound”, once belonged to the celebrated 19th-century Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, a close friend of the composer Johannes Brahms. It was gifted to the New England Conservatory in 2015 following the death of its most recent owner, a former student, Si-Hon Ma, with the understanding it would one day be sold to fund musical scholarships.
The winning bid for the so-called Joachim-Ma Stradivarius was almost $5m short of the record $15.9m (then £9.8m) paid in 2011 for the Lady Blunt Stradivarius named for Lord Byron’s daughter, a boundary it had been expected to test.
The money will be used primarily to fund an endowment at the Boston musical college providing scholarships for aspiring young violinists. Andrea Kalyn, president of the conservatory, said the instrument had been a prized possession, and that a handful of students had enjoyed the privilege of playing it, but the school ultimately felt the time was right to sell.
“Now we really have the chance to have it benefit so many more students, generations of students to come,” she told the New York Times.
“It’s really about what’s the most powerful use of the instrument.”
The Conservatory graduate Geneva Lewis played the Largo from Bach’s Sonata No 3 on the Jochim-Ma violin to saleroom attendees before the auction, the newspaper said.
Only about 600 instruments crafted by Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari and his family in the late 17th and early 18th centuries are believed to survive, mostly in the hands of collectors. Private sales have reached as high as $20m, some reports say.
The Joachim-Ma violin was one of several once owned by the Hungarian virtuoso and composer, perhaps best known for performing the premier of Brahms’s violin concerto in 1879.
Joshua Bell, the American violinist and musical director of London’s Academy of St Martin in the Fields, told NPR that Stradivarius violins offer “sound colors” to their players.
“It’s kind of the overtones and the way once you get to know the instrument, you can find these tonal varieties that are very difficult to find in a modern instrument,” said Bell, who has owned a Stradivarius for more than 20 years.
“It’s not just for the name. It’s something very, very special that it does to the player.”
