Cremona to Central Park: Stradivari & Nahan Franko’s Legacy

Musician Nicola Matteis arrived in London in the early 1670s. Describing himself as “Napolitano,” he was the first Baroque violinist of note active in the capital. Very much his own promoter, he published his Arie diverse per il violin in 1676, a collection of 120 pieces for solo violin. A second extended edition with an English title-page appeared two years later. In 1685, he published the third and fourth parts of the famous Ayres for the Violin.

Matteis is credited with changing English taste for violin from the French to the Italian style of playing. Soon after, attention shifted from performer to instrument which sparked a veritable cult of Cremonese violins. The name Stradivari became a metaphor for perfection attained by a combination of individual genius, skill and attention to detail.

Born in 1644, Antonio Stradivari’s craft did not appear out of thin air. He continued a long line of luthiers based in Cremona who, for hundreds of years, had produced fine instruments. Little is known about the man himself. Contemporaries did not deem it necessary to eulogise a craftsman or chronicle his achievements as was done for painters or sculptors. No authentic portrait has survived.

All this contributed to nineteenth century myth making. Edgar Bundy’s 1893 painting “Antonio Stradivari at Work in his Studio” typifies the mystique surrounding the hero-violin maker.

Smithsonian Strads

Stradivari’s instruments became desirable to musicians and collectors all over Europe. Most surviving “Strads” have a story to tell about intriguing provenances or spectacular acquisitions (even theft), while scientists tried to figure out why a Strad sounds so superior compared to other instruments. Chemists, acoustic engineers, climatologists, psychologists and historians searched for Stradivari’s elusive secret.

The Smithsonian holds Stradivari’s 1701 “Servais” cello, uniquely famous for its state of preservation and perfect sound. It takes its name from the nineteenth-century Flemish virtuoso Adrien-François Servais – the “Paganini of the cello” – who owned this instrument for over two decades (it still retains its original label). His custody helped preserve the instrument in its original condition.

The instrument was later acquired by amateur cellist Charlotte Bergen of Bernardsville, New Jersey, who for half a century enjoyed possession of the cello, before donating the “Servais” to the museum in 1981 where it was hailed by the curatorial staff as one of the jewels in the music collection.

The Smithsonian also holds the Axelrod Stradivarius Quartet of ornamented instruments in its collections, consisting of the Greffuhle violin (1709), Axelrod viola (1696), Ole Bull violin (1677), and Marylebone cello (1688). Stradivari’s introduction into America is a multi-layered narrative about European migration, fishy dealings and American-born pioneers in the nation’s musical history.

Fish & Strings

Entrepreneur Herbert Richard Axelrod was born on June 7, 1927, into a family of Russian Jewish émigrés in New Jersey. Few verifiable details of his younger days are known. At the age of seventeen, he joined an army training program. Six years later he was serving in Korea, assigned to a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) unit. A keen ichthyologist, he wrote his Handbook of Tropical Aquarium Fishes during his time of service (the book eventually sold more than a million copies).

Back home, he founded the magazine Tropical Fish Hobbyist, the first issue of which appeared in September 1952. Occupying a lucrative niche in the market, he opened TFH Publications Inc. three years later. It became the largest publisher of pet books in the world. Axelrod’s Atlas of Freshwater Aquarium Fishes ranks as an iconic contribution to the subject.

Axelrod’s sister publishing company Paganiniana produced musical-themed books that provided an outlet for his passion for stringed instruments (he himself published in 1936 an unauthorised biography of Jascha Heifetz, the great Russian-American soloist).

Throughout his life Herbert was an amateur performer as well as a collector of rare violins. Over his lifetime, he built up one of the largest collections of Italian instruments (he bought his first Strad in 1975). He also donated many millions to orchestras and academies. In 1998, the philanthropist donated the famous quartet of Strads to the Smithsonian.

In 2003, he sold some thirty instruments to the New Jersey Symphony (NJSO) for $18 million. At the time, the collection was valued at $50 million and hailed as a generous gift. Others became suspicious and questioned both the value and provenance of the instruments. He was suspected of fishy dealings. In 2005, Axelrod was sentenced to eighteen months in prison for (unrelated) tax fraud.

Turkish Delight

Although not part of an American collection, the violin that carries the label “Antonius Stradiuarius Cremonensis Faciebat Anno 1725,” now known as the Wilhelmj Stradivari, has an intriguing history that involves the development of instrument making and restoring in the United States.

August Wilhelmj was born on September 21, 1845, in Usingen in the central German state of Hesse. His debut in Wiesbaden at the age of eight created a sensation. Franz Liszt called the prodigy a “future Paganini.” August began his professional concert career in 1865 embarking on the itinerant life of a virtuoso travelling through Europe, before settling in London where he was appointed Professor of Violin at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

A friend of Richard Wagner, August led the violin section at the 1876 première of Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring Cycle) in Bayreuth. He became famous for his arrangement of the air from J.S. Bach’s orchestral Suite in D major, known as “Air on the G String.” Wilhelmj enjoyed a world-wide reputation. In 1885, he received what must have been an astonishing request from Abdul Hamid II, inviting him to travel to Constantinople and perform for the ladies of the Sultan’s harem.

Countless imaginary seraglios had been created in print and paint (and in Mozart’s music) after decades of European devotion to the Orient, but not a single male artist had ever been permitted to enter into these private quarters – with the exception of Wilhelmj and his fiddle. He must have been the most envied man in the Western world at the time.

It has not been reported how the female audience responded to the performance by this tall and broad-shouldered figure with long wavy hair (like a Greek statue according to contemporary sources), but the Sultan was impressed. He decorated the maestro with the Ottoman Order of the Medjidie and showered him with diamonds.

Strad in San Francisco

August Wilhemj took an active interest in the technique of violin making. His London house at Avenue Road, St John’s Wood, was a museum of instruments from where he encouraged aspiring violin makers to devote themselves to the trade. In concert, he performed on a 1725 Stradivarius which later was named after him. Purchased in 1866, the instrument links Europe with America.

In 1879 Wilhelmj gave a series of concerts in Brooklyn. During this tour it became apparent that his priceless violin needed some repair work. Seeking advice from his Parisian friend Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, Europe’s outstanding violin maker and former owner of the instrument, he was told to call in the help of Pierre-Aloysius Josephs.

Born in New York on December 18, 1833, Josephs had received his training in Vuillaume’s workshop at Rue Croix des Petits-Champs during the late 1860s and early 1870s. The master was known for his relentless drive for perfection. He was also a passionate collector and the owner of twenty-four Stradivari violins.

The apprentice received a solid schooling in Paris. On his return to the United States, he worked as a violin maker in St Joseph, Missouri, where he stayed until 1876 when he and his family boarded the newly incorporated railway service from St Louis to San Francisco to open the city’s first violin and bow making shop at 1412 Kearny Street.

Wilhelmj presented him with the most challenging task of his career, forcing him to put all his past experience into practice. The maestro was delighted with the result of his workmanship. It was certainly the first ever Stradivari violin being restored in an American workshop.

American Prodigy

August Wilhelmj was not just a great performer, he was also an inspiring teacher. One of his pupils in Berlin during the early 1870s was a New Orleans-born youngster named Nahan Franko whose father Hamman was a jeweler of German Jewish descent.

The original family name was Hollaender, a dynasty that produced a number of musicians. A supporter of the Confederacy, Hamman lost everything during the Civil War, forcing him to relocate to Germany where his son studied at the Berlin Conservatory under direction of the imposing Hungarian-born violinist and composer Joseph Joachim.

The family returned to New York in 1869. That year Nahan made his debut as a prodigy at the impressive Steinway Hall on East 14th Street (opened in 1866) and subsequently toured with the immensely popular Italian opera singer Adelina Patti. After that engagement, Nahan moved back to Germany for further studies with Joachim and Wilhelmj.

Franko was in Berlin in the early 1870s, some five years after Wilhelmj’s father had purchased the Strad for his gifted son. Nahan would have had ample opportunity to hear the master play the instrument. That is perhaps the reason that he never embarked upon a solo career himself.

Being confronted with mastery of expression constitutes to some artists a challenge to compete. For others, genius proves to be a forbidding and inhibitive presence. Such is the nature of creative rivalry. Nahan’s close encounter with a commanding performer drove his career in a different direction. Within an American context, the outcome was relevant.

Franko ‘al Fresco’

Back in New York, Franco joined the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, being appointed its Concertmaster (lead violinist) in 1883. On November 30, 1904, he was charged with the performance Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, thus becoming the first American-born conductor leading the MET.

Over the years he would conduct more than 100 performances of the Orchestra. Franko also initiated a tradition of popular Sunday Evening Concerts.

A year later he and his German-born wife, the actress Anna Braga, bought what is now known as the Nahan Franko House at 296 West 92nd Street (designed by Clarence F. True in 1894). The house-warming party was widely reported. On November 12, 1905, The New York Times described it as a spectacular musical and champagne-flowing event that kept the neighbors awake until dawn.

Amongst the guests, the reporter listed three dozen musicians by name, including Naples-born Enrico Caruso who, having made his New York debut in Verdi’s Rigoletto in 1903, had taken the city by storm; fellow Neapolitan Antonio Scotti, the celebrated baritone who, in 1901, had been the first to perform the role of Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca; and Willem Mengelberg, the Dutch conductor who led the Philharmonic during the 1905/6 season. New York’s musical world offered a cosmopolitan landscape.

In 1907 Franko left the Metropolitan Opera to form his own Nahan Franko Orchestra. Beginning in 1908, he performed a series of open-air concerts in Central Park. The success of bringing the classical repertoire to the outdoors initiated a tradition of organizing free “al fresco” concerts in the city. Simon & Garfunkel’s public concert in Central Park in September 1981 may never have occurred without Franko’s pioneering initiative.

Nahan’s funeral in June 1930 was attended by a large gathering of personalities in musical and theatrical circles. His pallbearers included Theodore Steinway and John Philip Sousa. The significance of his contribution to musical life was widely acknowledged.

Franko’s education and repertoire may have remained predominantly European, but he was the first American-born conductor to figure prominently in New York’s emergence as a center of orchestral and operatic music. He created a new and fertile musical environment from which home-grown talent would soon appear and attract the attention of enthusiastic audiences.

Illustrations, from above: Edgar Bundy, “Antonio Stradivari at Work in his Studio,” 1893 (Birmingham Museums Trust); Nicola Matteis, Ayres for the Violin, 1678 (British Library); The Axelrod quartet on display at the Smithsonian (NMAH); from left to right: the Greffuhle violin (1709), Axelrod viola (1696), Ole Bull violin (1677), and Marylebone cello (1688); the Wilhelmj Stradivarius, Cremona 1725; Nahan Franko in an open air concert at Sheepshead Bay Speedway, August 31, 1918 (Library of Congress); and the Nahan Franko House at 296 West 92nd Street, NY, NY.