Bernard Greenhouse’s Stradivarius Cello Sells for More Than $6 Million

Unless you’re Itzhak Perlman or Yo-Yo Ma, long gone are the days when a professional classical musician could actually own a Stradivarius, Guarneri, Amati and so forth. With sales of these instruments now ranging in the millions of dollars, it is left to wealthy patrons to buy these instruments and hopefully loan them out to deserving players. Sometimes this happens and sometimes it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, it often sits in the house of the buyer collecting dust or is simply put on display in a museum where it is played perhaps once a year.

The most recent example is the sale of Bernard Greenhouse’s cello, a Stradivarius known as the “Countess of Stainlein” and built in 1707. The buyer, “a patroness of the arts from Montreal,” as the Times states, purchased the cello for $6 million and has now loaned it to Stéphane Tétreault,

The purchaser was a “patroness of the arts from Montreal,” who declined to be identified further, Mr. Reuning said. He said she has decided to lend the cello, known as Countess of Stainlein, ex-Paganini of 1707, to Stéphane Tétreault, an 18-year-old player from Montreal with a budding career.

Here’s to hoping Mr. Tétreault isn’t an avid iPhone user.

via Stradivari Cello Sells for More Than $6 Million – NYTimes.com.