Because I’d been reading about Stradivarius on the bus home, my helpful iPhone suggested a related story: the Totenberg Ames Stradivarius, stolen and ‘silent for decades’, was to be played again in concert.
Idly, on the hot top deck of the 38, I read on. Roman Totenberg, the celebrated Polish-American violinist, was 70 when his beloved Strad was taken back in 1980. He’d spent the evening playing Mozart at the Longy school of music in Cambridge, Mass, and when he left his dressing room to glad-hand fans, a former student slipped in and sloped off with the fiddle.
The police had their suspicions, but these were the days before CCTV and nothing could be proved — so the Totenberg Ames Strad sank into three decades of obscurity. It wasn’t until the penultimate par that the name of the student was mentioned. No big deal. No one you’ve heard of. Just a once-promising musician called Philip S.
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