Přemysl Špidlen 1920–2010

My father loved violins and violin making. He played the instrument all his life, and was in the same amateur quartet for 40 years. He also loved to share his enthusiasm with others, and discussions with him about violins and violin making could go on indefinitely.

Anywhere he travelled, he would track down a local violin maker. And after every concert he attended he would go backstage to meet the soloist, or rather meet their violin! On a trip to Japan in the 1980s, he located a violinist who at that time played Jan Kubelík’s ‘Emperor’ Stradivari, an instrument my father knew well because Kubelík had been a client. The violinist was recording in a studio and at first everything seemed fine. But when she learnt that my father was Czech, she refused to meet him. The only explanation he could think of was that she had been told not to let anyone from Czechoslovakia touch the instrument, perhaps because the Czech state laid claim to it after the defection of its owner, Kubelík’s son Rafael, in 1948. Whatever the reason, my father left without seeing the violin he knew so well.

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