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One of the world's foremost authorities on important musical instruments, Stewart Pollens is the founder and director of Violin Advisor, LLC, a consulting firm that advises musicians, orchestras, conservatories, collectors, and investors on the acquisition of fine violins and other stringed instruments. Mr. Pollens represented the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra in the November, 2007 sale of thirty fine Italian stringed instruments. Among these instruments are violins, violas and cellos by Antonio Stradivari Giuseppe Guarneri "del Gesù," Antonius and Hieronymus Amati, Francesco Ruggieri, and Matteo Goffriller. Purchased by the private investment firm Medley Capital, the collection will remain in the hands of the NJSO for at least the next five years. Trained as a violin and keyboard-instrument maker, Mr. Pollens served as the conservator of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1976-2006. His work there included the restoration and maintenance of the museum's encyclopedic collection of over 5000 instruments, as well as research, writing, and lecturing on the collection. Among his duties was the examination and authentication of all purchases made by the Department of Musical Instruments. Stewart Pollens has written extensively on stringed and early keyboard instruments, including The Violin Forms of Antonio Stradivari (London, 1992), The Early Pianoforte (Cambridge, 1995), Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù (London, 1998), François-Xavier Tourte: Bow Maker (New York, 2001), and The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar (Cambridge, 2003). He is a contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and writes on a regular basis for The Strad. Mr. Pollens's book The
Violin Forms of Antonio Stradivari has been hailed as "the standard
work on the evolution of Stradivarius's designs" (Giles Whittell, The
Times, October 27, 2000). This book contains life-size photographs
of all of the extant wood forms and patterns used by Stradivari in the
construction of his violins, violas, and cellos, and includes an
analysis of their geometry. In The Early Pianoforte, Stewart Pollens traces the history of the piano back to 1440, nearly three-hundred years before the work of Bartolomeo Cristofori, the harpsichord maker who is generally credited with having invented the piano in Florence around 1700. In 1997, Mr. Pollens received the American Musical Instrument Society's Nicholas Bessaraboff Prize for this Cambridge University Press publication. In François-Xavier Tourte: Bow Maker, Stewart Pollens and co-author Henryk Kaston provide a technical description of Tourte's working methods and reveal new biographical facts based upon previously unpublished documents discovered in French archives. Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù features 200 life-size color photographs taken by Mr. Pollens and complete technical documentation of the twenty-five Guarneri violins that were displayed in the “Masterpieces of Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù” exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1994. Containing newly discovered biographical and historical information, this is the most thorough study to date of this great maker and his work. Mr. Pollens contributed the chapter on dendrochronology, a scientific procedure used to determine the age of the wood used in making violins. Tourte's workshop in Paris, 1927, shortly before its demolition |
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Profiles of Stewart Pollens have appeared in Sinfonica (March, 1999), City Journal (Spring, 1995), Continuo (April, 1989), and American Lutherie 20 (Winter, 1989). In 2002, Mr. Pollens was featured playing the world's oldest surviving piano, the Cristofori piano of 1720, on the WNET television arts program entitled Egg. Mr. Pollens is currently writing The Workshop of Antonio Stradivari, scheduled for publication by Cambridge University Press in 2008. This book will include new biographical information and detailed analyses of Stradivari's workshop materials preserved in the Museo Stradivariano in Cremona. Mr. Pollens is married to the concert violinist Stephanie Chase and resides in
New York City.
Stewart Pollens and Itzhak Perlman in the André Mertens Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1994. Jascha Heifetz's Guarnerius del Gesù violin was then on loan to the Museum and was used by Mr. Perlman in a concert there. He is seen trying out the instrument.
Watch Stewart Pollens speak on
"Five Centuries of Violin Making" |
In 1999, Mr. Pollens
challenged the authenticity of the world's most famous violin, the Ashmolean Museum's "Messiah," in a series of articles
published in the Journal of the Violin Society of America. The
controversy initiated by these articles and presentations at the Violin
Society of America and the American Federation of Violin Makers was widely
reported in major newspapers and magazines throughout the world, including
The Wall Street Journal (March 11, 1999), The Times (London)
(March 15, 1999; October 27, 2000; November 11, 2001; November 26, 2001),
Le Figaro (December 7, 2000), La Stampa (March 28, 1999),
The Strad (August, 2001), Attache (September, 1999),
Money (June, 2002), Forbes.com (April 22, 2002)
and Metropulse.com (February 17, 2001. 