Life

Radio review: Haunting story of Lev's violin

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

Nuala McCann
Nuala McCann Nuala McCann

Lev’s Violin Radio 4

How precious a violin is to a musician. In the right hands, each belongs so perfectly to the other with all the beauty of Argentinian tango - how do you tell the dancer from the dance?

Helena Attlee’s chance meeting and sudden love affair with Lev’s Violin began on a warm night, the rows of seats all taken, hers at the front .. the music overflowing and pouring out on to the streets of a small Welsh town.

At the end of the concert, her friend turned to her and whispered: “How dare he speak to us like that, we’re married women.”

She talks about holding the instrument – Lev’s violin - like a newborn child, supporting its head with one hand and its body with the other.

It has been worn to the bone by countless years and is tinged by the intimate residue of sweat from musicians.

Its scarred old body sets her on a journey to find out the truth behind it.

And in one of those coincidences, Helena finds that she is being sent to Italy for work and is not too far from Cremona … the heart of violin making in Italy, home to Antonio Stradivarius.

It is where Lev’s violin was created so she has to go.

And if you have not already been enthralled by this journey, then prepare to be transported to Italy. Face it, this is the nearest you’re going to get any time too soon.

So it is music to the ears – Attlee’s words paint a picture of an Italian town as the sun’s rays fade in the rose of evening and the crowds mill in the piazza.

It’s a seductive picture, especially now when the only journeys are in our imaginations.

Like the violin and the musician, the reading and the writing marry beautifully too.

Fenella Woolgar’s voice transports us. As she speaks beautiful Italian, we’re there with her in Cremona, wandering the streets, sipping Frascati in the sun dappled square.

Attlee takes us to stare at violins behind glass - like caged animals at the zoo – she says.

She wonders if this violin was bought by Lev from a Roma musician, perhaps via the Nazi confiscation and sale of violins belonging to Jewish musicians.

Ah, but you’ll have to listen to learn more.

It’s a lovely story, written to haunt you, just in the way that beautiful violin music does.