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Trees that can sing (Part 1/4)

Only one makes it – just one from 10,000 spruce trunks reaches the worktable in Martin Schleske’s studio, to be made into a master-class violin. A tree like this has to suffer – put up with 200 to 300 years on poor soil in a harsh climate, little water and the icy temperatures of the mountains just below the timberline. Only such a “crisis-stricken” tree, which has had to fight its way through life, growing slowly, can produce good tonewood. A lowland spruce growing in ideal conditions that shoots up and fills out quickly has no resistance. It has no resonant wood, no personality. “Our life is not a walk in the park either; humans, too, grow and develop through crises,” says master luthier Martin Schleske. The New York Times has described him as one of the “most important living violinmakers” and the German daily Die Welt has dubbed him the “Stradivari of the 21st century”.

baeumediesingen inhaltsbereich

So what is the secret of world-famous violins? Finding the right tonewood? Skilled workmanship or precise sanding? Or the almost therapeutic sensitivity of the violinmaker in recognizing what kind of violin precisely suits a musician?

They are only found in very specific regions of the Alps, these “mountain giants”, often some 50 meters tall, extremely firm and with no branches. It is these mountain spruces that Martin Schleske says are “destined for sound”. The 45-year-old used to scramble up and down trees himself in mountain forests, fighting his way through snow and ice in the Bavarian Alps with provisions and a chainsaw in his rucksack. Every violinmaker has his informants: a network of foresters and wood dealers. When a storm fells some of the massive spruces on top of a mountain, the race begins: quick, up to the top and bag the best ones before others hear about it... “The wood has to have a greasy shine when you cut into it. It mustn’t look dusty,” says Schleske. The expert can already tell whether the tree is a “singer” when the sawed sections of trunk rumble down the mountain on a truck. For as they bounce off each other some sound “like a bell, with a free and light tone,” while others just sound “dull and wooden”. What a violinmaker wouldn’t do for that free sound!

Nowadays Schleske rarely has the time for such expeditions. He visits his wood dealer, who specializes in tonewood, two or three times a year. Yet there is still some detective work involved: “The most important thing is still to be the first in line when a new delivery comes in.” Then he goes to his wood dealer and appraises the often 3,000 so-called “canopy-scrapers” with an expert eye, but only five of them are real top-grade specimens.

publicado às 18:44


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