The thief, his wife and the ‘Huberman’ Strad

Discover more lutherie articles here

Click here to purchase a poster of the Antonio Stradivari ‘Huberman’ violin 1713 

While the lives of most violins do not encounter the underworld of crime, the 1713 ‘Huberman’ Strad has crossed this unseemly threshold, yet re-emerged. This century it has been stolen twice — both times from the great Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman — and for nearly 50 years it was played in New York and Washington DC, by a café musician who alone knew he played on the missing ‘Huberman’. And most recently, the story of its second theft has been the subject of a court case between a daughter and stepmother, fighting over reward money paid for its return.

The provocative epilogue to the ‘Huberman’s tale was revealed in detail in both an unreported opinion by the Superior Court of Connecticut (3 October 1995), and affirmed on appeal by the Supreme Court of Connecticut (31 December 1996). The judge described the testimony at trial as a ‘story more dramatic than the most contrived mystery show, which has the ring, in most part, of irrefutable truth,’ and also characterised the testimony as involving ‘long-secreted facts’.

The ‘Huberman’ Strad’s last disappearance was in 1936 when the violin was stolen from Huberman’s dressing room at Carnegie Hall while he was giving a recital on his Guarneri ‘del Gesù’. It was not until 1985 that the ‘Huberman’s’ location was finally discovered and, subsequently, authenticated and restored by Charles Beare.

In the mid-1980s, Julian Altman’s widow, Marcelle Hall, had been told by Altman on his deathbed that his violin was the stolen ‘Huberman’ Strad. When Altman died Hall sought to return the instrument to its rightful owner, then Lloyd’s of London, but she also wanted a financial reward…