Bidding for a Scarce Viola Set to Begin at $45 Million
It may well prove to be the most expensive musical instrument in the world — a Stradivari viola, whose asking price will start at $ 45 million when it is offered for sale this spring — but, just for a moment, it was held up with no hands.
The viola was tucked firmly under the chin of the violist David Aaron Carpenter, who briefly needed both hands to adjust his bow during a demonstration of the instrument. “I won’t go that crazy on this again,” Mr. Carpenter said. “It’s possibly the most expensive instrument in history, and I don’t want to break it.”
If the viola fetches anything near its asking price, it will dwarf previous sales records for musical instruments. The “Lady Blunt” Stradivari violin set an auction record when it was sold in 2011 for $15.9 million. While some instruments may have been sold privately for more, none are believed to have gone for anything near the $ 45 million being sought for this viola, which was owned and played by Peter Schidlof of the Amadeus Quartet until his death in 1987 in England.
The staggering starting bid underscores the way collectors have driven up the price of rare instruments in recent decades.
Violas are sometimes thought of as less significant than violins — rarely in the spotlight, played by fewer famous virtuosos, with less music composed specially for them. But it is precisely their status that has made this viola so valuable: While there are roughly 600 violins made by Antonio Stradivari, only around 10 of his violas are known to have survived intact.
“The value is a combination of factors,” said Tim Ingles of Ingles & Hayday, which is handling the sale with Sotheby’s. “It is a Strad, which is the first thing, made in the very best period of Stradivari’s work, which is between 1700 and 1720. It’s incredibly well preserved — one of the best-preserved Strads in existence. It’s one of only 10 violas in existence. Then you add to that the fact that one of the most famous violists of the 20th century played it for over 25 years.” Mr. Ingles said that the “Macdonald” viola — named for one of its early-19th- century owners — sold in 1964 for $ 81,000 to Philips, the Dutch electronics company, which owned the Deutsche Grammophon record label and bought the instrument for Mr. Schidlof to play with the Amadeus Quartet, which recorded on the label. ( The ownership of the viola eventually passed to Mr. Schidlof “by a process we don’t fully understand,” Mr. Ingles said.)
It is unclear who might offer such a sum for the viola, which will be displayed i n New York, Hong Kong and Europe.
David Redden of Sotheby’s said that the instrument might appeal to the type of buyer who will pay millions for a coin. But while no one would try to spend a coin worth millions, the viola is meant to make music.
“Musical instruments and string instruments are quite different from selling some of the other things,” he said. “Because they need to be played.”