Bucks
Elizabeth Pitcairn Stradivarius
Dear Friends,
Good morning. As you read this column, a Tinicum Township young woman is playing a Stradivarius violin at Christie’s Auction House in New York City. Before a press corps led by the New York Times, Elizabeth Pitcairn, daughter of Mary Eleanor and Laren Pitcairn, has a fascinating assignment…demonstrating the sound of a famous violin.
On May 16, her great uncle Raymond Pitcairn’s 1707 “Hammer” Stradivarius will be auctioned at Christies. Elizabeth would not speculate what the “Hammer” would command but a Christie vice president, Kerry Keane, disclosed that the “Lady Tenant” Strad exceeded $2 million a few years ago.
“Many of the Strads have nicknames, usually referring to the family that owned them,” Keane told an audience where Elizabeth was playing. Mighty Betsy and I heard her play the “Hammer” and her own “Red Mendelssohn” Strad at Cairnwood, the ancestral home of the famous Pitcairn family in Bryn Athyn. Antonio Stradivarius built the “Red Mendelssohn” in 1720.
Elizabeth gave an amazing
performance. The tall Solebury School graduate (1991) is 5 feet 10 inches.
She’s very slender but has the strength of a tigress. Her father answered when
I called Elizabeth the next day. I could hear her practicing in the background.
“How do you train physically,” I asked?
“I run, ski, play tennis, spend lots of time
at the gym lifting weights and doing pushups and pull-ups,” she answered.
You’d need plenty of strength training, I thought remembering the selections Elizabeth had chosen the night before. She played five numbers but my favorite was excerpts from the last movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Her fingers flew over the strings as her bow made sweeping gestures. There were moments when the sound was so quiet that we strained to hear them. But when the passages demanded fortissimo, Elizabeth provided the contrast with ease.
Nozomi Takashima accompanied Elizabeth on the piano. She created an entire orchestra with her ten fingers. Elizabeth told us that Nozomi was her accompanist since Elizabeth was 12, and her high school days at the Solebury School. Incidentally, Kerry Keane from Christie’s is a Solebury grad as well (1973).
Like Mozart, Elizabeth was just three when she began playing under her mother’s encouragement. Mary Eleanor is an accomplished cellist and the music director of the Lenape Chamber Ensemble, now in its 20th year.
After Elizabeth’s stunning performance, I asked what happens when one of the four strings breaks? I remembered the famous virtuoso, Nicolo Paganini, who’d transpose a composition unto three strings when one broke.
“I swap my violin with the [orchestra] concertmaster’s,” Elizabeth laughed. “Once, a string broke and cut my finger,” she continued. “I continued to play on a substitute violin but the blood was flowing over my fingers!” It must have been startling for the audience.
Elizabeth was struck by the historical moment at her great grandfather’s home because she’d never performed there. “Last night was special,” she said. “Playing in the ancestral home was so meaningful for me. I draw upon them [the Pitcairn clan] for inspiration. He’s smiling down upon me,” she added referring to John Pitcairn, the patriarch.
Elizabeth told an amusing story about her great uncle Raymond Pitcairn, the owner of the “Hammer.” “Uncle Raymond was an excellent violinist and was the concertmaster of the orchestra,” she said. “He had the roof raised on his chauffeur driven-car so he could practice.”
That’s what you call raising the roof!
Last Sunday, Elizabeth performed the Mendelssohn concerto with the Bryn Athyn Orchestra. She’ll be playing in Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, and Denmark in August. For $4 thousand plus, you can be a shipmate with Elizabeth on the Silversea, a luxury liner plying the North Sea.
And you can follow her career on Elizabeth’s website: epitcairn@aol.com. There will be additional columns about her and her remarkable family.
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith