Classical Life

The phone on my desk at work rang around noon Monday. I sort of figured it was the wife on the line and it turned out I was right. I didn’t know that she would be so excited, though. Wife, son and violin teacher had made a visit to Stephen Davy’s violin shop in Laguna Niguel, which doubles as his house, in the morning. Their mission: To try out more violins. My son is in the market for his first full-size violin and his teacher, Alexander Shipitsyn,  is determined that he get a good one; his grandparents think it’s a grand idea as well and are chipping in.

I had expected this to happen, me being a know-it-all and such, though I didn’t know it would happen so soon. They had found “The One” — the violin that stood apart above all others, the clear winner, the end of our quest. My wife said that there was no question. This one was the best. The boy got on the phone and you should have heard how excited he was. He knew it too.

It turns out that the violin was one of Mr. Davy’s favorites and he had owned it for 30 years. He handed it to my son as the first of several instruments to try out. My wife said it got very quiet in the room when the boy did so. I don’t know if a choir of angels hymned along and the skies parted because I wasn’t there.

The violin’s provenance is not quite in order, which hurts its sale value but not its sound. The following is what we think it is, but I don’t believe we can prove it. It’s an 18th century Italian violin, made in Rome by one Giovanni Giorgio Taningard. The date on the label inside says “Fecit Romae Anno 1748.” (Labels can’t always be trusted, though.) There’s not a whole lot of information online about Taningard; even his dates are uncertain. One source says that he might have worked with or for David Tecchler (1666-  died after 1743), described in Bachmann’s “An Encyclopedia of the Violin” as “the most important violin maker of Rome.”

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The time has come. My son is growing like a weed and his violin teacher says he needs a full-size violin, a good one. The grandparents are willing — eager, in fact — to chip in.

And so I find myself in Foster’s Violin Shop, “Makers, Dealers and Restorers of Fine Violins,”  in Orange during my lunch hour on Friday. The shop is a house, actually, circa 1920, on a residential street in the old part of town. My wife and son, toting his current violin, meet me there. You walk in the place and are surrounded by wood, from floor to ceiling, string instruments everywhere. To the left is what must be the dining room, only it’s Roger Foster’s work room, a giant table covered with the tools of his trade and a bird in a cage its most noticeable features.

An assistant greets us at the front desk, and asks our mission. Her next question is necessary — what price range are we looking for? My wife’s answer is enough to make anyone nervous, especially me. The assistant doesn’t bat an eye, though. In the big scheme of violins, the number we quoted her is no big deal.

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