11/02/2025
Over the last few weeks a number of friends have asked me about the Joachim-Ma Stradivari for sale at Sothebys, and I thought it was a good moment to comment on it.
Out of around about 700 Stradivari violins there are perhaps fifty, perhaps more, that are both of the golden period *and* in an outstanding state of preservation, along with perhaps ten Del Gesu violins of similar extraordinary condition. These have always made the highest sums of money, and the sale of the Lady Blunt in 2011 for $15.9 and Vieuxtemps Del Gesu with an asking price of $18m around the same time is consistent with the prices that these have sold for. However Stradivari’s Golden period was not just his best period for the quality of his violins but also his most prolific. More than half - perhaps five hundred of his violins were made in this period.
Regardless of how fabulously they play, many of them have been damaged and expertly restored, as was the case in this one. Restoration can fix things, but it isn’t a Time Machine and can’t revert instruments to an earlier state of purity. The Joachim-Ma was just such an instrument.
I don’t know what Sotheby’s were thinking in a $12-18m estimate except that the reserve price of $10m was pretty much the value that these instruments sell for in today’s market, and it sold with 12.5% buyers premium for an impressive price given where it stood in the market - there should be no concern for the market that it failed to reach estimate, or that it failed to live up to expectations. Sotheby’s hype was a bit much!
Perhaps by putting it in an old Master’s sale, Sotheby’s we’re reaching for a clientele outside of the established violin world, but if there are such people they didn’t take the bait. I can think of a few scenarios that may have happened, but can’t really indulge speculation.
It is important to understand that few Strads command the top prices. Back in 1999 when Golden Period Strads at auction failed to tip the milllon pound mark, Sotheby’s made a private sale of £3.5m for the Lord Wilton which was considered hugely above the expected prices of the times. That is a violin in the league of the Vieuxtemps and Lady Blunt. I think there is a cautionary tale here about taking auctioneers valuations at face value, which often have a back story, but there is no sense that the instrument underperformed, it simply should never have been compared to the most valuable Strads in existence, even if it sounds amazing and belonged for a while (like so many others) to the prolific player-dealer Joseph Joachim.
It is these instruments that really offer the perfect balance of quality for the soloist. There is nothing lost in terms of tone, but they are not the miracles of preservation where conservation overrides the demands of playing.
Proceeds from sale of 1714 instrument will be used to fund scholarships for violinists at New England Conservatory
