* * The virtuoso and the luthier

They were an odd pairing, perhaps, the Israeli-born chamber violinist and the Floyd County fiddle maker. Nevertheless, the bond was clearly evident from the moment David Ehrlich greeted Arthur Conner at Conner’s hand-built home in Check, Virginia, with me last week.

Arthur is in his 90s now, and I met him when portrait artist Leslie Roberts Gregg and I included him in our collaboration, Keepers of the Tradition, Portraits of Contemporary Appalachians. I described him as an impish man with a devilish grin. From a modest, country upbringing, he fought in World War II, drove around much of the world, and retired from a career at the N&W shops in Roanoke. Bored, he taught himself how to first repair and then make stringed instruments. His greatest strength is in his knowledge of wood and the physics of acoustic movement of sound through grain structures. He has modeled his instruments after the Italian masters, Stradivari and Guarneri.

David was a child prodigy on the violin, growing up in Israel after World War II where his parents emigrated after surviving the Holocaust. David studied at Tel Aviv University where he was concertmaster and soloist with the Tel Aviv Chamber Orchestra. He moved to the United States to study at Northern Illinois University where he met his wife, Theresa, a pianist. He now teaches students in Arizona, China and the Czech Republic as well as in Blacksburg where he has an appointment at Virginia Tech as a “University Fellow of Fine Arts.”

After re-acquainting, Arthur hobbled to the other room and returned with a bow and put a violin in David’s hands. David plucked the strings and drew the bow across, making minute tuning twists on the string pegs.

David held the instrument before him in his lap as Arthur described the manufacturing. Arthur put his hands together, flat, palms down, index fingers adjacent, illustrating the way he splits a single piece of wood, butting and gluing the edges together, to make the piece that will be the violin’s top. He uses straight-grain wood from the interior of ancient trees, some from the primeval forests of Alaska. The top of the violin has a grain running lengthwise and the bottom crosswise. “All of the fiddles I’ve made are with split-out wood.” He said that the pairing of the two pieces, identical because they’re split from one, gives the sound an equal path where neither side dominates.

Arthur had lost count of the fiddles he’d made, guessing somewhere around 100. “I’ve made four cellos and two bass fiddles, too.”

David was knowledgeable about the history and development of not only violins but horse-hair bows. He mentioned Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, the 19^th Century French luthier whose bows today can cost upwards of $500,000! Bows can have gold or ivory inlays, which add value. The horse-hairs on a bow are carefully chosen from only male horses. Under a microscope, they reveal tiny barbs or hooks that, when drawn over the strings, cause the vibration that produces sound.

The shape of the instrument impacts the quality of the sound. Earlier violins were rounded on top, producing less volume, suitable for small rooms or “chambers.” Later violins, especially Italian instruments, had flatter tops that produced more volume, better for unamplified orchestras.

David picked up a Conner violin, held the chin-rest tightly against his chin and purposefully drew the bow back and forth across the strings with his right hand while his left fingers danced briskly on the strings, left hand bouncing in vibrato. The sound was loud, clear, and high. His expression remained unchanged. Arthur’s face took on a reverential smile, clearly appreciating the genius of the virtuoso.

Concluding, David gushed, “Wow, it’s amazing.” He held the instrument before him again, admiring its beauty.

And so time marched by as it always does, virtuoso and builder trading knowledge, tips, and ideas, washed in mutual admiration. Each aspect of the instrument, the scroll, peg box, neck, bridge, sound post, bouts, ribs, and more were discussed and debated. “Seems like you know more about violins than anybody I’ve come into contact with,” Arthur complimented David.

As we prepared to depart, David played portions of Vivaldi’s famous Four Seasons, the Allegro from “La primavera,” Spring. It was the Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, in a country home kitchen, in Check, Virginia. Arthur’s eyes moistened at the thrill of the music; mine did, too.

Later, David told me, “Arthur Conner is a treasure to this area. I know that many local players use his instruments, and some were given the instruments because they couldn’t afford them. It is amazing to me that he is self-taught, a team of one, and was able to learn all aspects of violin making. I wish him long life and good health.”