Gianandrea Noseda, the Italian conductor who is music director of Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra, has been quietly loaning vintage stringed instruments to members of the orchestra. At present, they are playing seven violins and one viola from a collection that Noseda has been assembling since 2011.
“Noseda’s personal investment in the instruments – collectively valued at $5 million – is less the indulgence of a collector than the intervention of an artist,” The Washington Post’s Michael Andor Brodeur writes.
The source of the loans has been masked through a foundation and a trust. “I thought that it was better to keep it in an anonymous element,” Noseda told Brodeur. “I didn’t want it to appear that this is ‘something about Gianandrea.’ It’s more connected with a general idea of sound, a general idea of motivation.”
Most of the instruments in Noseda’s collection, crafted in the 18th and early 19th centuries, were acquired during his years as music director of Teatro Regio in Turin, Brodeur reports:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2023/04/14/noseda-nso-antique-instruments/
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