Lev's Violin

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Lev's Violin by Helena Attlee: Episode 4

Lev's Violin by Helena Attlee

Episode 4

BBC Radio 4 - Lev's Violin by Helena Attlee, Episode 4

An Italian adventure by Helena Attlee. Read by Fenella Woolgar.

An Italian adventure by Helena Attlee.  In her search for the origins of this violin, Helena investigates how the violin got to Russia.  Read by Fenella Woolgar.

Helena Attlee first heard Lev’s violin played at a small music festival in Wales. The music being played was Klezmer, Jewish music from  Eastern Europe.  It blew her right off her feet.   

The violinist said he’d been told the instrument came from Cremona, the heart of violin making in Italy, home to Antonio Stradivarius.   

Helena sets off on a quest to find out where it was actually made. She travels to Cremona, to the Italian forests where the Alpine spruce grows, and the timbers come down by river. She tries to find out if it might have been a “church violin” played in the great cathedrals and palaces of the Popes and the Medicis, and how it got to Russia where it was bought by Lev from a Roma musician, perhaps via the Nazi confiscation and sale of violins belonging to Jewish musicians.  

Finally a dendrochronology test reveals its true origins.     

Written by Helene Attlee
Read by Fenella Woolgar

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