Violin

We suddenly remembered a standing invitation from a man named Charles Overman, who had a fine country place in the Midlands.

and whom we had met from time to time on the continent and in england in three days we had joined the jolly stag-house party overman was entertaining thorough-going cosmopolitan man of the world as he was he proved an excellent host and gave us fine shooting over the stubble it was the custom for the men to gather in his cosy little den for a good night whiskey and soda a last cigar and an exchange of yarns before bedtime that was how we heard the story the talk starting from a desultory discussion on various happenings outside ordinary experience took a more serious turn our host left the room for a moment to return with a fine old violin leaning against the mantel he faced us as we lounged in the easy chairs with which the den was littered talking of things happening for which there seems no ordinary explanation overman began in the reminiscent manner of a man with a yarn to spin this violin if the story i was told about it is only half true has played a strange and ghastly part we settled down to listen with pleasurable interest all but one of us this was philip holmden a slim pale-faced young fellow from london whose reputation as a submarine expert and inventor was known to us all as overman unfolded his weird tale holmden i thought at the time seemed strangely affected well then our host went on in response to a general request for the story i bought this violin in paris chiefly because of its history sometimes i wonder if i didn't do a very foolish thing but the story seemed so impossible that i got it i suppose out of much the same spirit that impels men to sit down thirteen at a table spill salt walk under ladders and do all the other things that superstition warns us against briefly the story goes that this instrument at times gives off from its strings music in the night whoever hears it dies soon after in dead silence he walked over to the table and laid the violin down upon it there was not a sound except the crackling of the logs burning on the open hearth as he went back to the mantel and resumed over two hundred years ago it belonged to a chap guido bruneschi a florentine who like his townsman dante in a former age loved in vain bruneschi betook himself his unrequited affection and his violin to a hermit's cell he had been passionately devoted to the instrument in happier days and in his retirement was no less so only now he played nothing but the most doleful music the contadini used to gather near his cell at night to listen they told each other he was playing to his lost love and life then the violin was heard no more bruneski was found in his cell dead clutching his beloved instrument to his breast we looked at the thing as it lay on the table with new interest this story from another age gripped us his brother took it and kept it as a souvenir some years later he told his family that he had heard the strings of the violin throbbing in the night giving off the same wild wailing notes that his dead brother had coaxed from it long before three days after that he too was found dead with nothing to show why there was silence the wind sowed mournfully outside the fire crackled noisily holmden was paler than ever one of the men relighting his cigar and throwing the match into the fire said with an assumption of lightness might have been killed by one of the poisons those old johnnies were so clever with sort of borgia business you know i don't know overman went on anyhow the violin continued its unpleasant habit at more or less irregular intervals right down to a few years ago when a well-known spanish musician got it he knew the story but laughed at it and the instrument is a really splendid one he played it in all the capitals of europe one night as he was leaving the albert hall in london a woman pushed up to him and threw vitriol in his face it turned out to be some one with whom he'd had an affair long before he'd treated her rather badly i believe not long after he committed suicide but before that he told his doctor that he knew something was going to happen to him because two or three days before the vitriol episode he'd heard the violin in the night the thing was put up for sale at christie's and knocked down to a russian nobleman who was assassinated a few months later one of his servants told the police that a few days before his murder his master had asked him if he had heard what seemed to be strains of music in the night and those are the main points in the violin's history down to now perhaps i was a fool to buy it but nothing has happened to me yet and i'm not letting it worry me at all concluded overman with a careless gesture as he went over and took a cigarette from the box on the table incredulous though they might be the men were obviously affected by the wild tale and every one seemed relieved when the talk shifted to the morrow's shooting.

We were to visit a preserve not yet shot over from which much was hoped.

Soon afterward, saying our good-nights, we went upstairs to our several rooms.

my remark let him know that i was at least on the track after that i knew he'd moved the thing away that night then most likely they'd try and remove us what he didn't know was that i'd got the police outside with a system of signals by whistle all arranged but how did it come to play while we were in the room if the slat was in i took it out just as i heard him come to the door i hoped that the sound of the music would unnerve him for the few seconds necessary to land him safely he stuck his knee into the pit of my stomach though and put me out for a while then he got you down and you've only your own quickness to thank for the fact that you got the crack on the head i meant for him he was out of the room like a shot then i've got you and your confounded cane to thank for this i remarked ruefully fingering the ever-growing lump behind my ear i'm afraid so dixon but i wanted to catch him absolutely red-handed the whole thing was so wildly improbable on the face of it that i felt nothing short of that would convince the authorities now let's get an hour or two's sleep before this thing winds up he concluded rising i was glad enough to get to my room but it seemed that hardly had my head touched the pillow before i was summoned to an early morning conference downstairs thorne was with the police superintendent and a tall fair impassive faced man whom i recognized at once as a british government official the latter turned his cold blue eyes upon me keenly as i entered please tell mr dixon what you've just told me said thorne to the superintendent after introducing me as his aide and ally our men got overman said that officer in his abrupt official manner but he was a bit too quick for them he shot himself the other two are under arrest pending instructions from the government and a glance in the direction of the tall englishman we know charles obermann's real name to be karl obermann said the last-named individual, the government will not appear as far as he's concerned.

It may be supposed that Holmden has died of heart failure, as he really did, that, for some unknown reason, Overman shot himself, either deliberately or by accident, or was shot by someone else.

No hint of the truth must be permitted to get abroad." i rely on you gentlemen to keep your knowledge of this affair to yourselves for the rest wilhelm strasse may discover as best he can what has become of number fifty-five one more thing thorn i said breaking the long silence that had fallen as we were left alone yes was there any truth at all in that wild yarn about the violin or was it just part of the plot for a few moments my friend did not answer i cannot say he replied slowly at length i have known of stranger things things to which all our modern discoveries afford no solution and if it were true the violin lived up to its reputation Death followed it here, as it had followed it everywhere else.

As I went upstairs to pack up and leave that ill-omened house, I saw Thorn go across the hall to the large log-fire burning there.

the two instruments, yeah.

Violin's about the hardest in the world.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Then there's some other pieces on this program as well.

J.S. Bach's Concerto for Oboe and Violin, which we're accompanying with this string quartet.

If I had to hit on three quick highlights for the year, I'm a little biased, and these are all pieces that I'm playing.

But in the spring, we are playing this piece by Lalo Schifrin called La Nivelle Orleans.

Another reason why you don't hear this music so much is because, I think, the way it was published...

Nicola Mattea Sr.'s music is published in his Heirs for the Violin, and it's just a book loaded with movements.

Right.

They're not, like, formed into sonatas or, you know, or sort of suites or things like that.

What do you choose, you know? Sort of like the Domenico Scarlatti piano sonatas, although people don't seem to have any trouble in choosing programs in those, even though there are 500 of them.

Anyway...

So what Duo Dorado has done on this recording is taken movements from Nicola Mateus Sr.'s Heirs to the Violin and sort of put them into suites, trying to balance them out, fast, slow, lively, you know, things like that.

And it makes it a lot more listenable as a bigger sort of composition.

You need a Kruth.

Can you play stringed instruments? Violin was my second instrument.

Sorry? Violin was more...

I started piano at age six and then violin at age...

Oh, yes, sorry.

And it's very more abstract.

You know, piano, you sit down and you pluck the note.

Violin, it's finding notes in between notes.

"Just a moment," cried a tearful voice from the crowd.

"Can I join the music?" It was Victor the Violin.

"And I too," cried the voice of Clarence the Clarinet.

"And I, and I," cried Andy the Accordion and Barney the Bass.