鲍鱼tv

Helena Attlee first heard Lev鈥檚 violin played at a small music festival in Wales. The music being played was Klezmer, Jewish music from Eastern Europe. It blew her right off her feet.

The violinist said he鈥檇 been told the instrument came from Cremona, the heart of violin making in Italy, home to Antonio Stradivarius.

Helena sets off on a quest to find out where it was actually made. She travels to Cremona, to the Italian forests where the Alpine spruce grows, and the timbers come down by river. She tries to find out if it might have been a 鈥渃hurch violin鈥� played in the great cathedrals and palaces of the Popes and the Medicis, and how it got to Russia where it was bought by Lev from a Roma musician, perhaps via the Nazi confiscation and sale of violins belonging to Jewish musicians.

Finally a dendrochronology test reveals its true origins.

Written by Helene Attlee
Read by Fenella Woolgar

A Pier production for 鲍鱼tv Radio 4