Excerpt from “Man with a Mission”

by Timothy Pfaff

The following article was featured in the December 1998 issue of Strings.

Elmar Oliveira plays the “Lady Stretton” Guarneri del Gesu of 1726. “At least that's the year the label bears,” the violinist says, “though I have my own opinion that it might be a little later than that. What I saw at the 1994 del Gesu exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum made me think it might have come a bit later. The instrument is in absolutely magnificent condition and beautiful to look at. Because it's an earlier Guarneri, it has a certain elegance at slight odds with the stronger character of the later Guarneris, say around 1740. It has a slightly cleaner outline and a sculptural elegance, particularly the way the f-holes are cut. . . .”

In 1993, Oliveira also commissioned an exact copy of the “Stretton” del Gesu from Curtin & Alf in Michigan, which previously had copied one of his Strads. “His copy is fantastic,” he says. “It looks absolutely identical down to the last detail - including every nick, scratch, and patina change. The back wood - a very hard piece to match because of the very narrow grain on the ‘Stretton’ - is so identical as to be scary. And the sound is very similar in terms of timbre and character. I've played the copy with major orchestras and used it on recordings, and no one ever knew the difference until afterward - when I told them.”

“What's remarkable about the del Gesu is the way one can mold the sound. Getting that nuance has a lot to do with playing on an instrument for a long time - and the instrument's developing over the years. This doesn't happen overnight; it takes a certain amount of time for an instrument to develop to its peak. But at times one needs to put the original down and let it rest, and play another instrument. With such an exceptional copy, it's easier to switch from one to the other. All the measurements are exact.”