Robert Brewer Young, a dapper London-based luthier and San Francisco Art Institute alumnus, made his way to Alamo Square’s blue Painted Lady with two locked suitcases. In one was a Stradivari violin valued at $20 million; in the other, an Amati priced at a modest $1.8 million. The instruments — made by and named for the world’s most famous luthier, whose work was funded by the Medici family and European royalty — date back to the Enlightenment era.
Young’s mission? To put on a show so heart-wrenching as to entice a buyer for the $1.8 million violin, who would then bestow it upon Bay Area violinist Lisa Lee, the 300-year-old instrument’s latest player.
The invitation-only event Wednesday was held at the home of George Horsfall, known for his passionate patronage of the arts and for giving daily tours of his three-story Victorian. In attendance were a hand-selected crowd of roughly 45 San Francisco socialites and intelligentsia, board members of the city’s symphony and opera, university professors and lucky FOGs (friends of George).
What followed was an intimate, once-in-a-lifetime performance of works by Vivaldi, Bach and other baroque and romantic composers, played by two of California’s most lauded classical musicians, Lee and Eric Chin, both teachers at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Lee, who appeared as a soloist in the San Francisco Symphony for the first time at age 16, has played more Stradivari violins than perhaps anyone alive and was chosen to be the permanent player of one of the instruments shepherded by Young for her unique abilities to extract tones and voices from it, he told The Standard.
Chin is a founding member of the Telegraph Quartet, a lauded group that has performed at Carnegie Hall.
The virtuosos stood sentinel on either side of a third instrument on display — a cello, built by Young, that had been played the day before in Sun Valley, Idaho, by Yo-Yo Ma. The violinists duetted on a Vivaldi concerto in the living room of the Painted Lady, prompting gaping jaws and misty eyes.
After Lee played her first fantasia, Horsfall approached the living room and, choking up with tears, asked guests, “What just happened? I’ve heard lots of classical music, but nothing like that before.”
“On so many levels it was just sensory overload,” the host later wrote in a blog post. “It did not escape me that these three instruments were equal in value to, perhaps, six of the Painted Ladies!”
The violins date to 1722 and 1641. The former was made entirely by Antonio Stradivari, at the sunset of his golden age, and remains one of the most expensive violins on the market. The latter was made by his teacher Nicolo Amati. While it is impossible to trace all of their owners, these violins have been in the hands of French counts and history’s best musicians.
“We’re also listening to the lives, the music, the imprint of the greatest musicians of the last three centuries,” Horsfall wrote. “When we hear these voices today, we are also hearing the voices of the past. There’s a strong sense of continuity with the lives lost and reinvented in the wood.”
Young — who sports a graying quiff and speaks with an unusual accent marked by living in England yet raised by parents from Alabama — is considered one of the world’s finest luthiers. He works for J & A Beare, a shop in London’s fashionable West End that has stewarded dozens of Stradivari since it opened in 1892.
Young likens working with a Stradivari violin to having one-on-one access to a Van Gogh or Vermeer and displaying it in your home for others to see.
“They are the most celebrated, the best known and the pinnacle of violin making,” he said. “Having access to a true masterpiece to study it is incredible, but the unique thing about instruments is that it’s something you can share. Part of the objective is not just to have them secluded or viewed by a private audience but to actually share the experience.”
Classical musicians have long debated the greatest makers of their various instruments, but when it comes to violins, there is no contest.
Stradivari, born in 1644, worked in Cremona, Italy, until his death in 1737. He made nearly a thousand violins, violas and cellos, praised for their exceptional craftsmanship, materials and aging processes. It is estimated that only 750 Stradivari instruments survive, according to a comprehensive study conducted by J & A Beare.
The two violins traveling with Young are privately owned. They were entrusted to J & A Beare’s International Violin Society to offer for sale and to find a fiscal sponsor to take them on so that Lee can continue to play the Amati. “It’s rare that a musician can afford an instrument like this,” Young added.
Chin remarked that he could feel the layers of human history wrapped in the instrument as he played. This wasn’t an abstract sensation, he said; he could feel the past players in the vibrational shifting of the wood.
Horsfall, a gung-ho resident of Alamo Square, has made it his mission to share the beauty of his home and the culture of San Francisco. Lately, he has been staging regular salons — both political and cultural — for friends and neighbors. Last month, he invited Mayor London Breed and mayoral candidate Mark Farrell to partake in a private Q&A. Meanwhile, he continues to host daily tours of his home, which his mother bought on a teacher’s salary in the 2000s.
“George is a mensch,” said Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, a San Francisco resident and professor of English and bioethics at Emory University. “The openness that George extends of this house — with the concerts, with the tours, with his participation in the communities of preservation, history, arts and culture in San Francisco — it’s a very distinctive San Francisco contribution.”
To bring an end to the night of anachronisms, Horsfall passed around a black bowler hat to collect donations from his guests. The proceeds, he said, were for the musicians.