ALMOST NOTE-PERFECT REUNION
Violin out of tune, but back home
A melody penned centuries ago by Johann Sebastian Bach wafted over the front steps of the Transit police headquarters in Boston yesterday morning after a “priceless” 162-year-old violin was returned to a Watertown freelance musician who forgot it on a bench at South Station nearly two weeks ago. “I’m a really, really lucky lady today ... My heart was in my throat for 10 days,” Amy Sims said as she tuned the 1855 George Gemunder, which is valued at $45,000, in between parts of Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E Major.
“I do so thank the woman who did pick it up,” she said. “All of this is priceless to me.”
A jet-lagged Sims, 48, had returned to Boston just before midnight June 9 after attending a rehearsal in Chicago and said she was seated with the violin behind her and was checking the route home on her phone as she waited for the Red Line train.
After the train arrived, she went two stops to Park Street, climbed the stairs and was waiting for the Green Line to take the 57 bus home when she realized in a panic that she had left her precious instrument behind.
Inside the violin case, she said, was a $6,000 bow from the 1800s, important calendars and a copy of the violin part of the Beethoven Triple Concerto she is scheduled to play Aug. 8 at the Peninsula Music Festival in Door County, Wis.
When she reported the mistake to police, Sims said she was told the case would be very difficult to track down. The week and a half of waiting led to plenty of “sleepless nights,” Sims said, and “some imagining the worst-case scenarios and hoping for some best-case scenarios.” When T police released surveillance video images this week showing a woman carrying the case, tips flooded in, one leading to the woman and, ultimately, to her beloved violin.
The woman, whose name was not released, “had no intention of permanently depriving the owner of her violin” and will not face charges, T police Superintendent Richard Sullivan said. When she picked it up yesterday, the instrument was not damaged, just out of tune, its wood swollen from humidity — nothing some new strings and a good cleaning won’t fix, Sims said last night as she joined other musicians rallying for racial justice at the “Lift Every Voice” concert in Copley Square.
“I hope, one day, I’ll have a chance to meet the woman,” Sims said, “and show her just how much I appreciate what she did.”