Master of Violin Making Showing Craft in N.Y.
A moment is necessary here to speak about making instruments from scratch versus restoring them. Probably the greatest maker of all time, Antonio Stradivarius, would likely not have been a great restorer of instruments because he turned out fabulous instruments in such a short period of time, it would have simply been easier for him to make another great instrument from scratch.
I have been told by many violin makers that it is a different skill to be able to repair something broken: to disguise, to touch up, to form the same shapes with plaster casts coinciding with already existing arches.
Then, coating a new varnish on a new instrument is essentially the act of painting one new varnish uniformly over the completed instrument of bare white wood. With an old instrument, however, the varnishes are often more than two hundred years old. There is a problem of matching new varnishes to those whose patina has darkened and even changed its chemistry over hundreds of years.
But I’m happy to report that Bauni is equally the artist whether undertaking the very different tasks of restoring a broken viola that has lain dormant in dust, forgotten in a musty instrument case for 20 or more years, or when constructing new violins, celli, or violas.
Learning the Tradition of Violin Making
Stefan Bauni was born in Ludwigshafen, Germany. He sharpened his skills at the school for violin making in Mittenwald, Germany (1985-1988), a beautiful village in the Alps famous for its longstanding tradition of violin making, and worked there for three and a half years.
Bauni then went on to work at the violin shops of Peter Körner in Mainz and Gerriet Groth in Wiesbaden.
In 1995, Bauni worked in the workshop of Gilles Chancereul in Paris for nearly five years.
After moving to America, he worked for Christophe Landon of New York for six years before establishing his own business in 2001. Bauni’s own violins speak for themselves—any player will indeed be in for an auditory and visual treat after examining one. Modestly priced, the violins costing slightly in excess of $20,000, are tonally and visually the match for almost anything around.
Bauni knows the internal dimensions and has the artist’s eye. He is equally at home when fabricating a perfect copy of a previous master-maker and antiquing the varnish to look hundreds of years old or when crafting a new instrument with only the beautiful color of new varnish.
The beauty of the violins on display in early October may be matched by the venue. The space that will house the exhibition is a penthouse with views of Central Park and Times Square.
Eric Shumsky is a concert violist.
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