Francesca
Dego is an Italian violinist, writer, and teacher born in Lecco, Italy, in
1989. (Lecco is about 20 miles north of
Milan, Italy, and about 10 miles east of Lugano, Switzerland.) She is an ultra-Romantic artist known for her
iconic interpretations of Nicolo Paganini’s music. Her debut album (for Deutsche Gramophone) was
a recording of Paganini’s 24 Caprices, played on the same Guarneri violin which
Ruggiero Ricci used on the very first recording (of the unaccompanied version)
of the Caprices, a Guarneri del Gesu from 1734.
That Guarneri was her instrument for many years. She possesses a very brilliant technique (it
has been described as flawless), but her approach is often an operatic one,
providing dramatic and poetic sensitivity to everything she plays. She has stated that violinists often treat
Paganini’s concertos like showpieces when in fact, they are infused with vocal
drama. As can be expected, she has
toured the world several times and played with every major orchestra. Dego began violin lessons at age 4 with her
father, a writer, journalist, and college professor. For unknown reasons, the family moved to San
Diego, California, when Dego was age 5 and there she studied with Michael
Tseitlin at the Fairbanks School of Performing Arts. It was also there that she made her solo
debut at age 7, playing Bach’s first violin concerto. (A recording or video of that performance may
exist, but it’s not posted on the internet.)
A while later, possibly in 1998, at age 9, the family moved to Milan
where she graduated from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, having there studied
for several years with Daniele Gay, whom she holds in high esteem. She also studied at the Stauffer Academy in
Cremona, the Siena Chigiana Academy (in Siena), and the Royal College of Music
in London. Her teachers have included
Salvatore Accardo, Itzhak Rashkovsky, and Schlomo Mintz. Dego was invited to record on Paganini’s
famous Guarneri violin in 2019. After
Paganini’s death, the violin had never been played for more than a few minutes
at a time until Dego was granted the distinction of recording, in the span of
several days, an entire CD with it. In various
interviews, Dego describes in detail the experience of the recording sessions
with the violin, which included a security team of six people, posted around
her at all times, including during a recital in Venice. Dego’s discography is not yet very extensive
but it includes 15 CDs – two of those CDs are devoted to chamber music (trios
and quartets) and two are devoted to the music of Ferruccio Busoni, including
his violin concerto. She has recorded
the complete Beethoven sonatas on three CDs.
Dego has also championed (and recorded) the violin concerto of Friedrich
Wolf (better known as Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari), a concerto (published in 1944) which
was dedicated to the nearly forgotten violinist Guila Bustabo. Here is a complete recording of the
concerto. Interestingly, Dego has not
commercially recorded the concertos of Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bruch,
Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, or Sibelius, although they have been in her repertoire
for many years - you can, however, find her live recordings of them on YouTube
with different orchestras. She has
recording sessions scheduled for June, 2026, but I don’t know which works she
will be recording. Here is Dego’s
recording of Paganini’s 4th Caprice, considered the most difficult
out of the 24. In addition to being
gifted with the looks of a fashion model (Versace provides gowns for her
performances), she is also a writer, contributing articles to music periodicals
– Strings Magazine, The Strad, Suonare News, and Musical Opinion are among them. She has also written a book titled Tra leNote (Among the Notes) but I don’t know if it has been translated. She is now based in London and plays a
Francesco Ruggeri violin from 1697. Here
is one quote among many: “My dream is to always be able to work with orchestras
and colleagues who inspire me and make it possible to create something special
on stage.”
Anna Tifu is a Romanian (some would say Italian) violinist born (in
Cagliari, Italy) on January 1, 1986. (Cagliari
is the capital of Sardinia, a large island off the western coast of
Italy.) She is known for having studied
and spent most of her career in Italy.
She was widely recognized as a child prodigy from the age of eight. Her first teacher was her father at age
6. She made such fast progress that by
age 8 she had won the Vittorio Veneto competition with a first prize. (Vittorio Veneto is a small city in northern
Italy, situated 60 miles north of Venice, not far from the southern Austrian
border.) At age 11 Tifu made her first
solo appearance with orchestra. At age 12,
she played the Bruch g minor concerto at the famous La Scala opera house in
Milan. She graduated from the Cagliari
Music Conservatory at age 15. Tifu
studied further with Salvatore Accardo in Italy and with Aaron Rosand (2005 to
2008) in the U.S. Later still, she
studied in Paris also. Along the way,
she won violin competitions in Italy and Romania. It is possible that Tifu stopped taking
lessons when she turned 24 years old but I am not sure about that, although it
can be said that Tifu has been concertizing since age 11. For some time, her violin was the Berthier
Stradivarius from 1716 but I do not know if she is still playing it. She has also played Paganini’s Cannone 1743
Guarnerius. Here is a YouTube video of
Tifu playing Chausson’s Poeme. Here is a
link to a nice article about Paganini’s violin.
Alexander Markov is a Russian (some would say
American) violinist, composer, and teacher born (in Moscow) on January 24,
1963. Although his repertoire is very
extensive, he is best known for his performances (in concert, on CD, and DVD)
of the 24 Paganini Caprices. One YouTube
video of his performance of the last Caprice has over 6 million views. In fact, Markov’s playing of the pizzicato
section of this Caprice sometimes leaves the audience so spellbound they
interrupt the performance with rapturous, spontaneous applause – as the New
York Times music critic recently explained it: “…the dazzling
left-hand pizzicato variation drew a vigorous ovation midway through the work.” Markov also plays a six-string electric
violin in a rock band which he co-founded.
He co-wrote a unique rock concerto for his own use which he has had
great success with. I don’t think a
commercial recording of this concerto is yet available. Markov’s violin studies began at age 5. His father (concert violinist Albert Markov)
was his first (and most influential) teacher. However, Markov was also enrolled at the famous Central Music School for gifted children, which is part of the Moscow (Tchaikovsky) Conservatory. There, he studied with the well-known violin pedagogue Felix Andrievsky. (Andrievsky is now teaching at the Royal College of Music in London.) By age 8 he had already appeared in public. His family emigrated to the U. S. when he was
12. They arrived in Vienna on September 11, 1975 and spent three months there before heading for the United States. He continued studying with his
father for many years. At age 16, he
made his Carnegie Hall debut in New York.
(Two sources state that he made his Carnegie Hall debut on October 9,
1983, at age 20. He himself has said he
made his debut at age 16. The first was his debut with orchestra; the second was as soloist, in recital.) At
age 18, he began studying with Juilliard teacher Ivan Galamian. Galamian died a few months afterward. (Emanuel Vardi used to tell a joke that he
killed Leopold Auer because Auer died a few months after Vardi began taking
lessons with him.) At age 19 (1982)
Markov won second prize (most sources say the Gold Medal) at the famous
Paganini Competition (Genoa, Italy) and five years later he received the Avery
Fisher Career Grant. As a result of his Paganini
Competition award, he was granted the use of Paganini’s own 1743 Cannone
Guarnerius for a recital performance. (Other
violinists who have played this famous violin are Leonid Kogan, Schlomo Mintz,
Eugene Fodor, Salvatore Accardo, Maxim Vengerov, Gerard Poulet, Regina Carter, Anna Tifu, Dmitri
Berlinsky, and Ruggiero Ricci.) Markov’s
concertizing has taken him to all corners of the world and to most of the
world’s great concert halls and orchestras with top conductors on the podium. As do most concert violinists, he also
participates in music festivals far and wide.
He also frequently gives masterclasses all around the world. He has recorded for the Erato and Warner
Classics labels. His recordings are easy
to find on the internet. Although he
used to play a Guarnerius Del Gesu violin, Markov has been playing a 1970
Sergio Peresson violin for some time. He
recorded the 24 caprices on that violin.
I have heard it up close - it is indistinguishable from any Strad or
Guarneri violin. Here is a YouTube video
of the Paganini Caprice number 5 with Markov using the original bowings. The photo is courtesy of the Alexander Markov website.
Gerard Poulet is a French violinist and teacher born (in
Bayonne) on August 12, 1938. His father
(Gaston Poulet), with whom he began his violin studies, was also a
violinist. His career has been mainly spent
in Europe though he has performed in almost every continent. He entered the Paris Conservatory at age 11
and graduated at age 12. His main
teacher there was Andre Asselin. As did
Bronislaw Huberman before him, he had many teachers: Zino Francescatti, Nathan
Milstein, Yehudi Menuhin, and Henryk Szeryng were among them. Poulet made his debut at age 12 playing the
Mendelssohn concerto. He recorded the
third concerto of Mozart at age 14 with his father on the podium. At age 18, he won the Paganini Competition in
Genoa, Italy. As do all winners of that
competition, he got to play Paganini’s violin, the famous Cannone. He later dedicated a good deal of time to
teaching at the National Conservatory in Paris.
In 2007, he began teaching at the University of Arts in Tokyo. He might not be there any longer since I
could not locate his name on any faculty roster. Poulet played the 1720 Henri Marteau Guarnerius
from 1975 until about 1988 and that violin is supposedly now owned by Maxim
Vengerov, though I could not find a single public source to confirm that. His most famous pupils are most probably Renaud Capucon and Vineta Sareika.
Regina Carter is an American violinist, composer, and teacher born (in Detroit, Michigan - U.S.A.) on August 6, 1966 (Heifetz was 65 years old.) (One source gives her year of birth as 1963.) She is one of very few women jazz violinists in the world and is known for having received a MacArthur grant in September, 2006 – just as did Leila Josefowicz in 2008. She is also just one of two jazz violinists on this blog – the other is Stephane Grappelli. Carter began her violin studies at the age of four. She attended Cass Technical High School until graduation, playing with the Detroit Civic Orchestra while studying there. She then studied at the New England Conservatory (Boston) but ended up returning to Oakland University (Rochester, Michigan, on the northern outskirts of the city of Detroit), graduating from that school. After graduation, she taught in the Detroit Public Schools for one year. Carter then spent two years in Germany (1985-1987), immersing herself in the world of the jazz clubs there. Although she had already been dabbling in jazz music performance, her serious entry into that sphere took place in 1987. She played with the all-female jazz group Straight Ahead, with which she did some recording, until 1994. In 2001, she played a concert in Genoa, Italy. She performed that concert playing Paganini’s famous Cannone violin (Guarneri – 1743.) Camillo Sivori (Paganini’s pupil), Bronislaw Huberman, Ruggiero Ricci, Leonid Kogan, Eugene Fodor, Dmitri Berlinsky, and Salvatore Accardo, have also been accorded that privilege. As far as I know, she is the first jazz musician, the first female, and the first black violinist to do so. She also later recorded a CD using this violin. Coincidentally, until about 2002, the critics had largely ignored her career as a soloist and recording artist. Carter has also performed with the String Trio of New York and the Black Rock Coalition. She is the composer of How Ruth Felt, written for Ruth Felt, President of an arts organization (San Francisco Performances) in San Francisco (California, U.S.) for which Carter was Artist-in-Residence for some time. There are several videos of her performances on YouTube (one of which you can listen to here) and many albums available on the internet through Verve Records. Her violin is a 1747 Storioni.
Bronisław Huberman was a Polish violinist, teacher, and writer born on December 19, 1882 (Brahms was 49 years old.) He is best known for founding the Israel Philharmonic and for his individualistic style of playing. He is also the only concert violinist who had the same violin stolen from him twice – the 1713 Gibson Stradivarius – in 1919 and again in 1936. As Jacques Thibaud before him, he had to spend a year rebuilding his technique after a plane crash (in 1937.) (Thibaud’s hand injuries were suffered while he served in the armed forces in the First World War. His later plane crash in 1953 was fatal.) He also married an actress, just as Pinchas Zukerman did much later – not the same actress, of course. (Jascha Heifetz and Ivry Gitlis also married actresses.) He also advocated a United Europe, but mostly in his writings and lectures (though he did confer with some high-ranking political leaders.). Later, he had a public disagreement with a German conductor over his refusal to play in Germany after 1932. Violin pedagogue Carl Flesch had an intense dislike for him, though I don’t know why. It may have been because he simply didn't like his style of playing. Huberman was known in his time for being nervous, intense, and having strong convictions about everything. Those qualitites were probably reflected in his playing as well. Huberman first studied with Mieczyslaw Michalowicz and Maurycy Rosen from the Warsaw Conservatory and with Isidor Lotto in Paris (the study with Lotto may have been in Warsaw as well.) He played a Spohr concerto in public at age 7. From age ten, 1892 until about 1896, he studied with Joseph Joachim in Berlin, although his lessons with Joachim were sporadic – Joachim was absent from Berlin quite often. Huberman later said that another teacher – Charles Gregorovitch (student of Wieniawski) - had taught him everything he (Huberman) knew. However, he also studied with Joachim’s assistant (Karl Markees), Hugo Heermann in Frankfurt, and Martin Marsick in Paris. By the time he was 12, he had already toured Holland and Belgium. When he played in London a little later on, he was not as successful as he had been elsewhere. Back in Germany, despite his growing reputation, there were few concerts to play and money became very scarce. He had become the sole provider for his family and things began to take a desperate turn. It has been stated that during this time (1894), in Paris, Count Andrzej Zamoyski presented the Gibson Stradivarius violin to him. (This particular Count Zamoyski was the son of Count Stanislaw Kostka Andrzej Zamoyski – there are several Counts from this family named Andrzej. Other sources have him receiving the violin from either Count Jan Florian Zamoyski, Count Maurycy Klemens Zamoyski, or the Austrian Emperor in that same year - 1894. However, a respected violin site - Cozio - has him acquiring the violin in 1911, not 1894. According to the Huberman Archives in Tel Aviv, Huberman himself bought the violin in 1911. Obviously, these discrepancies need to be reconciled and I am therefore pursuing a solution to this seemingly simple riddle.) In that year also, Adelina Patti, a singer who was well-known back then, invited Huberman to play with her on her farewell tour coming up in 1895. Though he only played at her last concert (January 22, 1895), things went well for Huberman and his family after that - the concert was a huge and critical success for them. He was still only 12 years old. The following January (1896) turned out to be a memorable one, too. Everyone agreed that he was brilliant and unencumbered in his interpretations. At one of his concerts in Vienna (January 29, 1896), he played the Brahms concerto. Brahms was present (among other great musicians), sitting in the balcony, and was incredibly impressed. The critics called him a genius. After 1896, he had no need for further lessons. In November of that year, he toured the U.S., making his debut at Carnegie Hall (New York) with the Mendelssohn concerto on November 21. He was 13 years old. It would be 25 years before he would return (1921). His playing was often described as very original, authoritative, and impetuous, but his tone was said to be somewhat un-beautiful, lacking finesse, sweetness, and warmth. In Europe, he had performed for royalty – including the Austrian Emperor - in the U.S., he played for wealthy patrons. In 1897 and 1898 he toured Russia. After that tour, he took three years off to rest and practice some more – perhaps also to help care for his sick father (who died in 1902.) Though he disliked recording, he did some of that in 1900. He later recorded (among other things, for Columbia Records) the Tchaikovsky concerto (1928-1929), becoming, according to some sources, the first violinist to do so. He toured Italy in 1903 and even played a recital on Paganini’s Cannone Guarnerius – a replica of which luthier Daniel Houck has constructed for me. Up to that time, only Camillo Sivori (Paganini’s pupil) had played the famous violin – Ruggiero Ricci, Eugene Fodor, Salvatore Accardo, Regina Carter, Dmitri Berlinsky, In Mo Yang, Maxim Vengerov, Gerard Poulet, and Leonid Kogan have also played the Cannone since then. He continued to tour extensively and very successfully – including South America - for the rest of his life. After 1932 he did not play in Germany. In 1937, he left Vienna for Switzerland. A year after the airplane accident (1937), he returned to the stage with a concert in Egypt. In 1939, he moved to New York but returned to Switzerland after the end of the Second World War. YouTube has many sound recordings of his on its site. Here is a sample of one of them. Huberman died on June 16, 1947 at age 64. It has been suggested that he died in his sleep. Joshua Bell now plays the twice-stolen Gibson Strad.
Shlomo Mintz is a Russian violinist, violist, teacher, and conductor born on October 30, 1957 (Heifetz was 56 years old.) (Mintz was born on the same day as Leonidas Kavakos, although ten years earlier.) He is known for a career which encompasses a very wide range of activities – solo appearances, teaching, chamber music, recording, recitals, judging, philanthropic sponsorships, and conducting. He began his violin studies in Israel with the famous and beautiful Hungarian violinist Ilona Feher at age two. He studied with her until 1973. At age 11 (April 23, 1969), he made his debut with the Israel Philharmonic playing Mendelssohn's concerto (Uri Segal conducting.) Soon afterwards, as Itzhak Perlman fell ill, he substituted for him (again with the Israel Philharmonic), playing the first concerto of Paganini. Many concert musicians have launched their careers in exactly this same fashion. He made his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of sixteen with the Pittsburgh Symphony playing the Bruch g minor concerto. He then began his studies with Dorothy DeLay at Juilliard although his career was already well on its way. In 1997, he played Paganini’s famous Cannone violin (Guarneri del Gesu, 1742) - a replica of which I will soon have in my hands (thanks to luthier Daniel Houck) - during a concert in Maastricht (the Netherlands) with the Limburg Symphony. From the age of eighteen, Shlomo Mintz added the role of conductor to his artistic life and has since conducted many orchestras worldwide, including the Royal Philharmonic (England), the NHK Symphony Orchestra (Japan), the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the Israel Philharmonic. On April 6, 1992, Mintz made his New York conducting debut, conducting the Israel Chamber Orchestra on that occasion. In March 1994 he was named Principal Guest Conductor of the Maastricht Symphony Orchestra (The Netherlands). In 2008 Mintz was named Principal Guest Conductor of the Zagreb Philharmonic. Shlomo Mintz gives master classes worldwide and has been a member of the jury of several international violin competitions. His discography does not include the Tchaikovsky concerto nor the concertos of Bach or Paganini. Otherwise, it is fairly extensive. It has been reported that Mintz has recorded all of Vivaldi’s violin concertos in a single collection but I seriously doubt that – Vivaldi wrote about 230 violin concertos. I would have to see the collection to believe it. There are many videos of his on YouTube. As far as I know, Mintz still plays a Guarneri del Gesu (1700) and a Carlo Testore viola built in 1696.
I will soon be ordering a custom violin - my very first. It will be a replica of the Paganini Cannone. I am not yet at liberty to disclose the maker but in time I will. I expect it will be a fabulous violin. It will not play itself of course, but playing Mozart and Beethoven on it will be that much more pleasurable. Perhaps Prokofiev and Poulenc as well.
I have long believed that 60% of the sound of any violin comes from the player - the violinist's bow arm. The rest comes from the instrument. If you don't believe me, go hear a concert by the San Francisco Symphony. The current concertmaster is playing Heifetz' Strad. I think it's the Dolphin. It does not sound the way it did when Heifetz had it. It has nothing to do with the technique because Barantschik is a great player. It is all bow arm and that comes from intuition. A great violin however, makes it that much easier to get the sound out - your sound.
Nicolo Paganini is the most famous violinist who ever lived. He was born on October 27, 1782, in Genoa, Italy (Beethoven was 12 years old.) His early studies were on the mandolin, instructed by his father, who played mandolin on the side to supplement his income. At age 7, Nicolo switched to violin and began studies with Servetto, then Costa, Rolla, Paer, and Ghiretti. By age 18, he had achieved an important appointment to an Italian royal court, after which he received a second appointment at a different aristocratic court (a French court) in Tuscany. Neither appointment meant a great deal to Paganini since, especially after 1813, he earned a very good living through free-lancing. His stupendous and unmatched virtuosity on the violin made him a legend (and a fortune) in his own time. Whenever he played, normal ticket prices were usually doubled. Paganini did not actually play outside of Italy until he was 45 years old. After deciding to venture further west, he toured Germany, Austria, France, Scotland, Ireland, and England, among other places. He would often stay in one city for weeks, playing (and sometimes attending) many concerts. He is also famous as a composer of prodigiously difficult violin music. Because he could execute things with the violin that seemed humanly impossible, he was rumored to be in league with the Devil. Among many other works, he wrote six violin concertos, but is more famous for his twenty four caprices for solo violin, which have been recorded by nearly every violin virtuoso of our time, except Heifetz. His favored instrument was a Guarneri del Gesu of 1742 or 1743 (nicknamed the Cannone.) He died young, at age 58, on May 27, 1840. It is said that Sivori, his pupil, played for him one last time (at Paganini’s home in France), two weeks before he died.
Camillo Sivori (Ernesto Camillo Sivori) was an Italian violinist, composer, and teacher born (in Genoa) on October 25, 1815 (Beethoven was 45 years old.) He is remembered for being Paganini’s only pupil (although some say that Catarina Calcagno also studied with Paganini.) It is known that he initially studied with Paganini (for six months) at age six, but then also with Restano, Costa, and Dellepiane (the Director of the Conservatory at Genoa.) These last three musicians are now completely forgotten. Before leaving Genoa, Paganini wrote some sonatas for Sivori to play publicly. His last teacher, however, was Paganini, whose virtuosic style he adopted. Sivori supposedly later said that Paganini was the worst teacher the world had ever seen. From age 12, he began his career as a traveling virtuoso. He first played in Paris in 1827; Germany, Russia, and Italy in 1839; Belgium in 1841; England in 1846, 1851, 1853, and 1864; the U.S. in 1846 and 1847; all of Europe plus Ireland and Scotland in 1853. He also travelled to Mexico and parts of South America (presumably after touring the U.S. in the fall of 1846.) He actually lived in Paris for many years. Like his famous teacher, Sivori was a very generous man. He taught pupils between his concert tours but they are not well known. One of them was Zino Francescatti’s father. In his classes, Sivori emphasized the study of scales - he even said that that had been the only thing he learned from Paganini. Among his many compositions are two violin concertos which are now forgotten although recordings are now available of some of his minor works. Unlike Paganini, he frequently played works by other composers. One piece which he was very fond of playing was Francois Prume's La Melancolie. Sivori gave the English premiere of Mendelssohn’s violin concerto (the one in e minor) in London on June 6, 1846. It is said that he owned many fine instruments – a Stradivarius, a Vuillaume, a Bergonzi, and an Amati among them. His Vuillaume was a replica of Paganini’s Guarnerius (the famous Cannone.) Sivori died in Genoa on February 18, 1894, at age 78 (Stravinsky was 11 years old.)
Eugene Fodor (Eugene Nicholas Fodor, Jr.) was an American violinist born on March 5, 1950 (Perlman was about 5 years old.) His career was somewhat uneven and enigmatic. He first took up the violin when he was five and initially studied with Harold Wippler, concertmaster of the Denver Symphony for a number of years. At 10, he made his orchestral debut with that orchestra (playing Bruch's first concerto) and continued his studies with Wippler for another five years. At 15, he enrolled at Juilliard (New York) where he studied with Ivan Galamian. He also soloed with the Detroit Symphony at age 15. Josef Gingold was his teacher at Indiana University a short time later. By this time, he was already concertizing. He was then a student of Jascha Heifetz at USC. It has been reported that Heifetz dismissed Fodor from his class after Fodor refused to get a haircut to Heifetz' specifications (short.) He was also winning several competitions along the way, including the Merriweather Post Competition in Washington D.C. After picking up first prize in the Paganini Competition in Italy in 1972 at age 22, Fodor became famous. As if this weren’t enough, two years later (1974), he won a Silver Medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (no Gold Medal was awarded that year.) Ironically, even with these competition wins and dozens of successful concert tours under his belt, he was never a guest soloist with some of the best American orchestras – Boston, Chicago, and New York, among others. Speculation that Isaac Stern was somehow instrumental in shutting him off from certain venues prevails until this day. Fodor had at least 40 concertos and more than 40 violin Sonatas in his repertoire, in addition to countless miscellaneous works for violin and piano or unaccompanied violin. YouTube has a few videos of his playing. He also recorded several major works for the RCA, Sony, and Grazioso labels, among others. Fodor married (Susan Davis, with whom he had three children) in 1978 and divorced in 1985 (some sources say 1986.) He married her again in November of 2010. He was said to have a difficult personality. Fodor is known for having been selected to play Paganini’s violin (the Guarnerius Cannone of 1743, worth about $40 million) in a San Francisco recital in 1999, on the eve of Paganini’s birthday. (Other violinists who have been granted this honor are Camillo Sivori, Bronislaw Huberman, Salvatore Accardo, Ruggiero Ricci, Leonid Kogan, Dmitri Berlinsky, and Regina Carter) The recital received great as well as cool reviews. He is also known for having been arrested (in Massachussetts) for drug possession in 1989. His latest prize was the European Soloist award in 1999. Some time in 2010, he stopped playing the violin altogether. Fodor died on February 26, 2011, at age 60. His 1736 Guarnerius is now for sale in Europe - on the private market.
