A SPECIAL ENCOUNTERSpeaking about Cremona, you certainly cannot say that it is one of the most welcoming cities in Italy. In winter, cold and fog enter your bones and in summer the hot and humid weather of the Po valley, takes your breath away. But in few other places in the world you can have encounters that, without being exaggerated, I could define as extra-terrestrial.
Cello bow by D.T. Navea Vera About three weeks ago a customer of ours called and told me that in the next few days he would have come to Cremona and he wondered if it was possible to carry out a rehairing in one day. - "Of course, you just have to be patient and wait a couple of hours" -, - "No problem" - he says, - "I come to town to play the "Cristiani" and considering that the Master will rehair the Fetique , I think I will play it with your bow, would you like to attend ? "-. The Cristiani, is probably one of the most beautiful and famous Stradivari cellos existing, Mendelssohn wrote for him; obviously I did not wait for the invitation to be repeated twice. From the first moment it entered the room, it imposed its presence, not only the building technique of the instrument is superb, but looking at it, one almost has the impression that it is alive, so high is the energy it exudes . As if we were moving in a dreamscape, the rehearsal began and the sound literally flooded the room. I was immobilized. There was sound everywhere, a feeling of fullness never heard before, almost as if it was passing thru you. When, after a few minutes the musician stopped for a break, it was like waking up. I do not know why the musician had brought with him his cello, so unexpectedly he wanted to make a couple of notes with his instrument, I assume to better focus the different sizes in both of them. I could not believe my ears. Leaving aside the tone of the instrument, not even comparable to Stradivari's one , the most surprising thing is that it brought me back to reality in a sudden and surprising way. The room became at once ten times larger, similar to the difference you feel when you switch from a living room to a theater. I had already heard my customer's cello, played with that bow , and in our laboratory it seemed to have, in addition to a good tone a great mass of sound as well; that morning it seemed hoarse! It was not possible that it sounded so little. After a moment of confusion I understood; I looked around and to my surprise I noticed that the room where we were was much larger than I had judged. The feeling of fullness reached with the Stradivari had given me the impression that it was smaller, by coming back to a normal instrument also the room was resized. I do not think that the beauty of such a sound can be explained, not even how it managed to get it, but the acoustical physics allows me to explain the amplitude and persistence of this instrument. Very high sound speed and nonexistent harmonic distortion ! The high transmission speed makes the damping times of the sound to be very long, and the purity (very low harmonic distortion), let the instrument lose its physicality. Let me explain it better. The harmonic distortion is a disorder caused by a non-perfect signal encoding. If we were talking of an electronic device, the noise would be due to the electrical reactions inside the device itself. In stringed instruments it is not dissimilar. Again, these distortions are introduced by an imperfect harmonization of the system and the higher they are , the more the instrument materializes. The distortion affects the emission and portability of sound , which remains inside the instrument materializing it. When, instead, as in the case of the "Cristiani", the distortion is very low, the instrument loses physicality and becomes only sound. This is the reason why my client's cello was annihilated in the comparison , probably if he had played in a much smaller room, it would have been less ruthless. It is less critical to apply the proper acoustic solution to two square meters than two hundred. I told you this story, first because it was really a good experience, and then for you to realize that to make proper sound choices , both from the performer and manufacturer's point of view, a serious research job, the good old scientific method, is involved. If you want to see the color of cats you have to turn on the light, or, as my father says, "All cats are grey in the dark”! P.S. : The other protagonist of the day is depicted in the opening photo. 5900 m / s for 81.5 grams of elegance and power! Furthermore I am pleased to announce Master Ilya Grubert's latest work , the complete sonatas for violin and piano by Brahms, performed in a duo with Ms. Alena Cherny.
Click and listen to the samples So long Paolo
|
   |
