Stealing Stradivarius

Stealing Stradivarius

If I were going to write a novel, I'm pretty sure what its subject would be.  The villain of the piece would be an Itzhak Perlman look-alike who wants to add a touch of larceny to the great man's legacy by nearly getting caught with the item in question, then slipping away.   As I watch the story unfold, it occurred to me that such thefts must have happened many times.  These instruments have been so rare for so long.  I am not sure how many I would indicate are in existence today, I have seen a list of six hundred and fifty, but heard estimates as high as eleven hundred.  There have been fakes discovered.  Dendrochronology (the science of determining the age of wood) has proven the age of various impostors, proving they really weren't made of wood harvested in the 1600's.

The modern ear is apparently losing its ability to pick out the real thing in blind listening tests.  It's true.  That special sound said to be specific to the instruments manufactured by the Stradivari family in the late 17th and early 18th centuries is hard for audiences to pick out in live performances.  I know which violin would be the one that disappears as well.  It is the Baumgartner (yes, they have names, these violins).  You see the Baumgartner is presently on loan to Iryna Krechkovsky until 2015.  The Baumgartner would vanish in the last week of the loan's term.

One reason I have selected this one is the striking coincidence in this name--my hair stylist is named Iryna, and I have an appointment with her again tomorrow.  Imagine Iryna K. sighing as the days of December dwindle down to the single digits (even today, she has only twenty-three days left before she must return it to the Canada Council for the Arts).

The villain would recruit my hair stylist to impersonate the actual Iryna K.  She would step backstage on the night of the 3rd-to-last performance for Iryna K. and make off with the Baumgartner, giving it to the Itzhak Perlman look-alike, who will disappear.  Why my hair stylist?  Well, it turns out one of the most difficult tasks for an impostor Iryna is to be able to pronounce her own name with precisely the correct number (and quality) of "rolls" the "R" that must be sounded when saying the name.  Only a person of this same first name would be able to pull it off.  Of course, all the while, my hair stylist Iryna will have been duped by this man into believing he is really the renowned violinist, who has tragically misplaced his own Strad and wants just one more time to play a Stradivarius (of course he has to  trick her into it, my Iryna would never stoop to theft--grand or otherwise).  She would do it  to honor one of the final wishes of an artist of his stature.... (yes, he would tell her he has only a short time to live--hey, he's a villain, what can I say?).

When she wakes up on January 1st and learns that "Itzhak" did not return the Baumgartner by December 31st, she realizes what has happened.  She recruits a trio of her customers (I'm thinking one of them would be a handsome sixty-ish guy with curly grey hair and, well you know...) to help her get it back and restore the honor of the other "Iryna."  To do this, the hair stylist Iryna and her customers put together a scheme to steal the real Itzhak Perlman's Stradivarius (named Soil, after the Belgian Industrialist, Amedee Soil), knowing the fake "Itzhak" will be unable to resist the chance to obtain another (given that one of these "Strads" has sold for more than $13 million) when the hair stylist Iryna contacts him to find out where she can fence her newly-acquired Stradivarius.  Once he shows up, they can spring their trap and recover "Baumgartner."  Of course, nothing ever turns out exactly how it's planned now, does it?