“As he put it, he had lost his “musical partner of 38 years”.
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Two antique bows stolen along with the violin remain missing.
“My father would dream of opening his violin case and seeing the Strad there again, but he never laid eyes on it again”. He died in 2012, but the Stradivarius lived on – somewhere.
“Every day I get phone calls, emails about ‘Oh, I found the Stradivarius in the attic, ‘ and of course it normally turns out to be a fake”, he said. Although an aspiring violinist, Philip S. Johnson, had been spotted nearby at the time of the theft, the police didn’t have enough evidence for a search warrant or arrest.
In a story that aired on NPR’s “Morning Edition“, Nina Totenberg said that the violin’s disappearance was a “crushing loss” for her father, who had played the instrument for decades throughout the world. ‘I’ve had probably over 100, 150 [genuine Strads] in my hands.
“My mother was so frustrated”, Nina Totenberg recalled, “that she famously went around Boston asking her friends if they knew anybody in the mob who would break into this guy’s apartment”.
Fast forward another four years. Nina Totenberg told the news agency that Johnson was seen near her father’s office when the violin disappeared. “It’s easily recognisable. So when I saw this one, it was truly a Eureka moment”, explained Injeian. Between 1666 and 1737, Stradivari created over 1,000 instruments, including approximately 400 violins that are known to exist today.
When she got in touch with a violin expert, she was shocked to be told that it was indeed one of only 550 Stradivariuses left in the world, but it had been reported stolen. A civil lawsuit to formalize the agreement with Totenberg’s daughters and the government to return the violin was filed late Wednesday. He was a legend who worked with musicians like Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Leopold Stokowski, and Arthur Rubinstein, according to the New York Times. They agreed to meet at a hotel in Manhattan in June.
Mr Injeia recognised it immediately from “telltale markings” on the wood and varnish and recorded measurements of the stolen Totenberg instrument.
“I remember calling my father and asking, ‘Are you OK?’ and he just said, ‘Oh, yes, I’m OK, but it’s just like losing an arm”, she said.
The good news behind the recovery is that the appraisal process seems to be more meticulous than those investigators were in 1980.
Injeian inspected the violin and called the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who further verified that the instrument was Totenberg’s.
He contacted specialists from the FBI’s art theft team, who arrived within two hours.
‘To have it come back, three years after he died, to us, it’s like having him come alive again’.
That was a Friday. At the ceremony Thursday, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based Injeian said that he knew from the photographs that the violin appeared authentic, and the wear and tear on the varnish was a “giveaway” when he inspected it in person.
“The mystery was solved”. All these years, the violin had been in the same guilty hands.
Crafted in the golden age of violinmaking in Italy, Stradivarius instruments are admired as much for their quality as for their rarity.
“It’s a real miracle that it didn’t take any major hits or cracks or anything of that nature”, Injeian says.
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Photo of the Ames Stradivarius, taken shortly after it entered FBI custody. “We all feel that they’re touching us and telling us that life is good and to always be positive”. Standing feet away from its rightful heirs on a table by the podium Thursday, the violin boasts a curling F Hole of the violin from which one can still make out the Latinized name and location of its creator, Antonius Stadivarius Cremona.
