“Don’t worry,” says Florian Leonhard. “A bit of woodworm isn’t usually a problem. In fact, if the creature is in the instrument, it was in the wood before it was made. Of course, it can be bad. I once came across a violin, 280 years old and in mint condition apart from the woodworm. It had turned it into a sieve. But in some cases, it can improve the instrument. The secret is to keep playing it. They don’t like vibrations.”
Such particular and exacting concerns matter to Leonhard, a dealer and restorer of antique stringed instruments, who was appointed official expert and luthier for the Royal College of Music in London in 2018. They also matter to his clients. After all, they are probably investing between Dh250,000 and Dh125 million ($34 million) apiece.
These are no ordinary violins. They are made by the great Italian masters of the 17th and 18th centuries: Giovanni Guadagnini, Andrea Amati, Francesco Ruggeri, as well as Guarneri del Gesu – Italian composer Niccolo Paganini’s maker of choice and the subject of Leonhard’s definitive biography, releasing in October.
“Though most people want the biggest name: Antonio Stradivari,” says Leonhard. “Stradivari’s reputation has cast such a shadow over other makers, but that represents an opportunity.”
Why such extraordinary prices? Because while thousands of violin makers exist, there are perhaps fewer than 1,000 surviving antique instruments known today. Scarcity has also driven remarkable returns. Someone who bought one of these violins in the 1980s could easily have quadrupled their investment, or even increased it tenfold. Unsurprisingly, sales are private and discreet.
Like any market, values fluctuate. Reputation, condition and period all matter. Healthy returns remain achievable, but Leonhard cautions against romantic assumptions. “Some people think they’ve found a bargain, buy a violin by a name-maker and later realise it’s not the best specimen, or not from his best period,” he says. “It’s like buying a lovely 1970s Porsche 911 and then finding none of the parts have matching serial numbers.”
Naturally, with such sums involved, authentication is critical. “And as yet, there are no machines that can help us with that,” says California resident Roman Goronok, one of the world’s few renowned antique stringed instrument brokers. “You need long experience of an instrument’s history, its tool marks, construction and varnish. It comes down to scholarship, visual memory and intuition.”
Authentication has become a specialist discipline of its own. Stradivari research, in particular, took a major leap forward with the 2024 publication of Antonio Stradivari: The Complete Works, a six-volume catalogue compiled over eight years by J&A Beare, the London violin dealer established in 1892. Greater scholarship has also brought greater market stability.
But investment returns are not the primary reason people buy these instruments, Goronok argues. Antique violins are, he says, art that can be played. “These instruments represent hundreds of years of culture and handcrafts that may never be reproducible,” he says. “They place their owners at the heart of the arts. This is more about stewardship and philanthropy than commerce.”
Because as Leonhard points out, great musicians need great instruments. Yet, even world-class players often cannot afford their own Stradivarius. Owners therefore frequently lend instruments out, but only fully insured.
Association with exceptional performers – Joshua Bell, Sarah Chang, Midori Goto – can further enhance value.
Accidents still happen. In 2019, a Royal Philharmonic violinist left his 300-year-old David Tecchler violin, estimated at Dh1.2 million, on a train. It was eventually recovered after secret negotiations and a handover in a supermarket car park. Theft, however, is rare. “Most thieves don’t know what they’re looking at,” Leonhard says. “They grab the iPad and leave the violin sitting right next to it.”
Besides, the antique violin world is so small and interconnected – and instruments so well-documented – that fencing one is akin to selling stolen fine art: extraordinarily difficult.
There is another reason such losses remain uncommon. Goronok says he is only half-joking when he suggests musicians treasure these instruments more than their own children. They are the lifeblood of their art.
“Watching a musician play one of these great violins for the first time and suddenly feeling heard by the instrument is very moving,” Goronok says. “It helps owners understand they are custodians. These instruments have survived wars, changing tastes and generations. It’s not like buying a painting and hanging it on a wall. Ownership of a fine historic instrument makes it deeply meaningful when it’s played and not just sat in a vault.”
It’s not only about keeping the woodworms at bay, either. There’s a good reason why these instruments are so desired by professional players over even the most excellent of modern equivalents. Partly it is because every maker has a distinct voice. Leonhard describes a del Gesu violin, for instance, as having a “lion’s roar of depth”.
Age itself also shapes sound. Wood breathes. The material expands and contracts. It absorbs humidity, pollution and the passage of time. “Wood absorbs all the world throws at it. But we haven’t yet been able to replicate the effect in modern instruments. And people really have tried – salt baths, leaving it in sunlight, drying it out. Nothing works,” explains Goronok.
“Remarkably, the shape, form, materials and acoustic principles of an instrument designed to play baroque music in the 1700s still haven’t been bettered,” he adds.
Goronok estimates he has perhaps 20 years left in the business – time he intends to spend working through his little black book of contacts – and he suspects that his generation may be among the last major brokers of antique stringed instruments. Increasing numbers are disappearing into museums and private collections, which represents a loss not only for investors, but for music itself.
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