Jury and Audience
Disagree on
Old Dutch Violins!
For the third year in a row, the Grachtenfestival and the Musical Instrument Fund organized a public sound test last Sunday at Felix Meritis in Amsterdam, during which various top-quality instruments were compared. This year’s theme was “Old Dutch Violins.” Elisabeth Perry, concertmaster of the Radio Chamber Philharmonic, played five violins, including three by Johannes Theodorus Cuypers—the patriarch of the Cuypers family from The Hague—and two violins from the so-called Amsterdam School, built by Cornelis Kleynman and Hendrik Jacobs.
The expert jury selected a Cuypers from 1766, with the 1680 Cornelis Kleynman violin as a close second. The public voted overwhelmingly for the Kleynman as the best violin and for an 1806 Cuypers as the runner-up. The 1766 Cuypers, which the jury had selected as the best, received only a few votes and finished in second-to-last place! The Musical Instrument Fund will take another, unhurried look at the violins in question and hopes to ultimately purchase the best instrument.