Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik: Blind Test: Can You Recognize the Sound of a Stradivarius?

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Blind Test: Can You Recognize the Sound of a Stradivarius?

By Daniel Ross, ClassicFM London

Just how good does a Stradivarius sound, and could you pick one out in a blind test? The Strad magazine staged one to find out.

image: http://assets7.classicfm.com/2010/04/stradivarius-violin-1264422192-article-0.jpg

Earlier this month, The Strad magazine got the leader of the London Symphony Orchestra to play six different violins in a blind test - one of them being a legendary Stradivarius model from 1709.

Listen to the test below and see if you can work out which violin is the Stradivarius - you might be surprised…

The other violins that you can hear are an 1850 Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, a 1923 Giuseppe Fiorini, a modern Del Gesù copy, a Mirecourt French trade violin from around 1900 and an 1835 A.S.P. Bernardel.

Visit The Strad's feature on the experiment to find out more about what happened.

The magic of the Stradivarius: the most beautiful violins in the world

Take a look at some of the best and most beautiful violins in the world, made by Antonio Stradivari and his family, with photos from the Ashmolean museum's latest exhibition