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The 1714 "da Vinci, ex-Seidel" Stradivari was sold on Thursday for $15.34 million, a price for a Strad violin that is second only to the "Lady Blunt" Strad, sold in 2011 for $15.9 million. Both violins were sold through Tarisio Auctions. The "Golden Period" Strad was used for almost 40 years by Russian-American violinist Toscha Seidel (1899-1962), who was once a classmate of Jascha Heifetz, Efrem Zimbalist, Mischa Elman and Nathan Milstein in the studio of Leopold Auer in St. Petersburg. In fact, in 1922 George Gershwin wrote a song about the Russian-Jewish virtu...

Note from Max Rabinovitsj to the orchestras of Planet Earth: Lose the tails. Get into the classrooms. Learn to love streaming. Rabinovitsj, who has performed professionally for nearly seven decades, has the credibility to say that. He's been concertmaster of at least five orchestras, including the venerable St. Louis Symphony. He's performed at the Marlboro Music Festival for six years and founded his own trio, the Da Vinci, as well as playing with a number of others. He's shared the stage with luminaries such as Isaac Stern — in fact, playing the same work he's performing Saturday: th...

On many levels, the music is reminiscent of Vivaldi mixed with Johann Sebastian, but the genteel fabric, most notably in the slow movement, is tossed up by awkward elbow jabs of sound. It is vigorous and edgy, posing plenty of finger challenges for the violins. Happily, there is never a dull moment in this score. C.P.E Bach offers a more refined style, sensitive and more gracious, fitting with early classical music developed later by Haydn and Mozart. Unfortunately, we don’t hear his music often, and after experiencing this Cello Concerto in A Major (Wq 172), I am dumbfounded as to why.