violin bow

By chance, Maria Milstein one day came across a top-quality bow belonging to a colleague, which brought out sounds in her violin that she felt were missing with her own bow. This sparked a desire in her to search for a better bow. Maria applied to the Musical Instrument Fund for a top-quality bow, and after a thorough search for the ideal bow, she selected this Tourte bow. Thanks to a generous bequest, the fund was able to purchase this bow.

In addition to our own contacts, we were able to rely on Maria’s own international network; she went to great lengths to include as many bows as possible in the selection process. She combined concert tours abroad with visits to as many local dealers as possible, and Maria’s international fellow musicians also put us on the trail of bows offered by players themselves. Bows arrived in the Netherlands from Germany, England, France, and Belgium, but also, for example, from the U.S. In this way, Maria was able to try out and compare bows from the most important makers of the golden age of bow-making, spanning approximately 1780 to 1850, with Paris as its beating heart. Names such as Dominique Peccatte, Jean Pierre Marie Persoit, Jacob Eury, and Nikolai Kittel came up, and Maria went from one surprise to the next, as virtually every bow brought out qualities in the Bergonzi violin that she had never experienced before.

Last, but not least!
At one point, Maria seemed to have found the ideal bow: a Persoit. While the foundation had this bow sent to Brussels for a second opinion, another bow offered from the U.S. came into the picture. It was a bow made around 1790 by the brothers Léonard and François X. Tourte. Normally, such a bow would be far beyond the budget of the Musical Instrument Fund, but in this case, the bow’s ferrule and tip were no longer original, which greatly affects its value; collectors, in particular, tend to lose interest in such cases. We brought the bow to the Netherlands, and Maria tried it out. Here’s what she had to say about it: “I received the bow and immediately had to play Ravel’s *Tzigane* with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra; the possibilities and the richness of tone that the Tourte managed to conjure from the Bergonzi were overwhelming—people even asked me if I was playing a Guarneri del Gesù!”

Of course, the foundation also had this “Tourte” appraised by various experts, and it was tested by several other violinists with extensive knowledge of bows, such as Ilya Grubert and Vadim Tsibulevsky. Everyone agreed on its high quality, and we now realize all the more just how incredibly lucky we’ve been, because bows from this period—over 230 years old—and from these makers are extremely rare. The last one turned out to be the best!