After his death in 2012 his widow and three daughters attended the Violins of Hope concert in Rome and decided that this is where it belongs – in the hands of devoted musicians in fine concert halls. He was 97 when he could play no more and put his life-long companion in its case. For this he was awarded in 1992 the Medal of Jerusalem by Yitzhak Rabin. When the war ended he volunteered to use his engineering skills to build and set up ships for Aliya Bet, helping survivors of the war sail illegally to Palestine. Her son, Gualtiero was sent to a forced labor camp and loyal to his mother – took the violin along and often found hope and strength while playing Bach's Partitas with frozen fingers after a long day's work in harsh conditions.īorn in Ancona, Gualtiero graduated engineering school and worked in the shipyards of Genoa. Gualtiero's motherwas forced to board the first train, wagon 06 at the Central Station in Milan. Do not give up, sooner or later it will prove me right'. 'You may not become a famous violinist, but the music will help you in desperate moments of life, and will widen your horizons. When still a young child, Gualtiero'smotherhanded him a violin: Treasured violin, for short is a crossword puzzle clue that we have spotted 4 times.

She said she may now even have to cancel her audition to play with Music in Healthcare, a charity. They go back some 500 years in the north of Italy. Treasured: Ms Wise with the precious violin which she has toured the world with. The Morpurgos are an ancient and respected Jewish family. Vintage Lithograph Arisztid Szendy Treasured Memories Private Collection No 46 Musical Content Violin Sheet Music Warm Tones. Seniora Morpurgo and her daughters brought us the much treasured violin of Gualtiero Morpurgo, the head of the family from Milan, Italy. 'But I do my work.A few years ago a 90-something years old lovely lady and her three daughters came to our workshop in Tel Aviv. 'Not that I am a great performer,' he said. A multimillion dollar violin in hand, he paused for a moment to ponder his own place. 'A great instrument should get great music and also a great performer,' he said. He starts with scales and arpeggios, then something more substantial. He tunes them, then plays each for six or seven minutes. Getting down to work, he carefully removes each instrument. He stores his tools in a tastefully concealed closet: two bows, resin, baby-soft cotton rags and jugs of distilled water for the humidifier that keeps the air at the perfect moisture to preserve the instruments. Mosconi - who was born in Cremona, began playing the violin at age 9, studied violin making and went on to teach and perform - starts his work at 8 a.m., an hour before the museum opens.

'It's as if you were to ask me which of my three children I preferred,' he said. Mosconi has no favorite: The very question is a mild affront. That tension is on display at the violin museum at the city hall in Cremona, where the modern violin was born and built, to a standard not yet surpassed, by the families of Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari.Įvery morning, Mosconi, the city's official musical conservationist, stands before pristine, glass cases and faces three violins by the Amatis (one of the first makers of the modern violin, from the mid-16th century), two by the Guarneris and four instruments - three violins and a cello - by Stradivari. It was the kind of exercise, at once heroic and the slightest bit melancholy, and dogged by worry that the past may overshadow a less glorious future. He had just finished playing a few lines of Bach on the most valuable piece in this town's small but significant collection of locally made stringed instruments: a violin made in 1715 by Antonio Stradivari. 'You have to give your best with these instruments. 'In my case, too, I have to pay attention,' he said. 'When Schumacher gets to 350 kilometers an hour, do you think he ever loses his concentration,' he added, speaking of the retired racing champion Michael Schumacher. 'It is not a matter of habit,' Mosconi said. He is nothing but serious about what he does. treasured Sing-Along Messiah makes a triumphant return, directed by none other than G.F. It is peaceful where he works, in a chapel-turned-museum, so it jars when he compares his gentle job to the roar of Formula One racing. He is 75, and for the past 30 years, six days a week, he has finger-fed 300-year-old violins, worth millions of dollars, a diet of Bach, Tchaikovsky and Bartok. In this city that produced the best violins ever made, that job belongs to Andrea Mosconi. CREMONA, Italy - A violin, it turns out, needs to be played, just as a car needs to be driven.