‘May he hear the violin tonight’
Stolen Stradivarius played in heartbroken owner’s memory
NEW YORK— No two Strads are alike, they say, but the violin that Mira Wang reintroduced to the world Monday night is truly special. It was gone for decades, stolen after a concert in 1980, and its owner, Roman Totenberg, died in 2012 thinking it would never be seen again.
At a few minutes after 8 p.m., Wang proved her beloved teacher wrong.
“May he hear the violin tonight,” she told an audience of 200 people at a private club in Manhattan, and then launched into the Ysaye Violin Sonata No. 2.
Wang, 49, a masterful soloist who emigrated from China in the1980s to study with Totenberg, performed a movement that seemed scripted for the instrument, the moment and the player, with shifting tempos, dashing runs and delicate, crying notes. It’s not a piece you can hide behind — and she didn’t. When Wang was done, she declared, “I’m holding the Totenberg Ames Stradivarius in my hands.”
Philip Johnson, a talented but erratic younger player, stole the violin after a performance by Totenberg in Cambridge, Mass. He seemed to have gotten away with the crime. For the remainder of Totenberg’s life, memories of the Stradivarius — sparked by old recordings or concert posters — would bring sadness to the normally ebullient master.
Wang’s performance marked perhaps the final chapter in a stunning musical mystery. (As is standard in high-society Manhattan, the private club in which she performed allowed the Washington Post to witness the moment on the condition that it not be named.) Among the 200 people at the concert were many of the central characters in the happy ending.
Christopher McKeough, the FBI agent who helped recover the Strad in 2015, sat on the left side of the room. Bruno Price, the rare-instrument dealer whose shop restored it, took his place across the room.
Then there were the three sisters in the second row: Nina, Jill and Amy Totenberg last watched their father perform on the Stradivarius during the waning days of the Carter administration. They were thrilled to hear the violin reclaimed.
“I think it was better than we expected,” Jill Totenberg said. “Remember, she’s only been with that instrument for a month.”
The Stradivarius, built in 1734, is considered quite rare, as only 500 or so of the 1,000 violins dating before Antonio Stradivari’s death in 1737 have survived. Johnson stole it on May 13, 1980 at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, after Totenberg played an all-Mozart rehearsal.
He was a suspect at the time, but Johnson was never caught. It wasn’t until 2015, four years after his death of cancer in California, that his exwife took the instrument to a dealer to be appraised. It was immediately identified as Totenberg’s violin.
The sisters plan to sell the Stradivarius, but want to make sure that it ends up in the hands of a player instead of tucked away by a wealthy collector.
And first, they wanted it to be heard in public again. They knew exactly who should unveil it.
Wang met Totenberg in 1986 at a competition in Poland. With the help of a translator, she wrote Totenberg a letter that led to her being awarded a scholarship to Boston University, where he taught. Wang showed up in the United States not speaking any English and with a rickety violin. Totenberg loaned her another instrument, and he and his wife, Melanie, gave her a place to stay. At some point, he told her about the stolen Stradivarius.
“He told me of the suspicions, of who took it,” Wang said before the concert. “But of course, it had been so many years, he thought probably it was long gone. He didn’t like to talk about that. Because it would bring him pain, for sure. So we didn’t talk about it too many times.”
Monday night, the shift from looking back to looking forward began.
First, Wang played her solo opening. The audience cheered her, but her husband, cellist Jan Vogler, could tell the moment had been difficult.
“She was very emotional, because of Roman,” he said.
“I could see it in her face the first note.”