PROMS STAR’S JOY AS SHE IS REUNITED WITH HER VIOLIN
“Relieved beyond measure”: award-winning performer Jane Gordon with her violin today. It went missing from a train just a week before the musician was due to play in the Proms
AN internationally acclaimed musician whose 300- year-old violin went missing from a train, just a week before she was due to play in the Proms, today told of her joy at being reunited with the instrument.
Award-winning performer Jane Gordon, 37, accidentally left the violin on an overhead luggage rack as she travelled home from Waterloo station after a rehearsal on Monday.
CCTV footage showed that the Maggini violin, worth tens of thousands of pounds, and four bows worth £20,000 remained there for three hours before being removed by a passenger at Queenstown Road rail station, according to British Transport Police.
After appealing in the Standard for the violin’s return and promising a £500 cash reward for information, Ms Gordon today revealed that a couple had found it dumped at the end of their road after they saw the Standard’s story. They got in touch and returned the instrument last night. Ms Gordon said she was “relieved beyond measure”, adding: “It is amazing news. I am thrilled. We had a phone call from a member of the public that it had been found so we were able to retrieve it safe and sound. I am so happy this nightmare is over. I feel very lucky.”
She is a renowned soloist and violinist in the Rautio Piano Trio, and a specialist in performances of baroque music on historical instruments. She is due to play in the Proms on September 4 and 9 with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Ms Gordon said her violin is “much loved” and its disappearance was “like losing a member of your family ”. British Transport Police yesterday issued CCTV images of a couple on the train who they want to speak to in connection with the disappearance, but a spokeswoman said no arrests had yet been made.
Ms Gordon’s friend Krysia Osostowicz, 57, got her own £200,000 violin back when a woman tried to pawn it for £50 after it was stolen last month outside Brixton Tube station.
In 2012 Catrin Win Morgan’s £25,000 Stradivarius copy violin was returned after the Standard highlighted how it was snatched in similar circumstances to Ms Gordon’s from a train luggage rack.