Trieste, Italy, June 7, 1985
I met Maestro Sacconi during my first trip to
America, back in 1948. Mario Corti had insisted that I go meet him. Therefore, as
soon as I arrived in New York I climbed the stairs of that building on 57th
Street next to Carnegie Hall, where Sacconi was then working for the Herrmann
Company. When the Maestro met with an Italian, his face lit up and he was very
moved (I think he must have had great nostalgia for his country). And that's
how he received me, too: with the greatest cordiality, showing his keen interest
in my work (the Trio di Trieste was on its first American tour) and in my
instrument, which was then a Bimbi, an eighteenth-century Florentine violin.
When he saw that the fingerboard was pretty deeply grooved, he went to work
right away on his own initiative, and gave the instrument back to me that very
afternoon. I stood there wondering how a truly great man could show such real
interest in what would be considered a third-class instrument (and just think,
hanging almost carelessly from the ceiling were a couple of Stradivariuses, a
Guarnerius, a Guadagnini, and more) and give importance to a young concert
artist who had just begun his career; and right at that moment I saw Milstein
come in. He'd come to have the E-string tuner on his Stradivari adjusted. As I was
going down the stairs after having left the shop, Milstein commented, “Sacconi,
a Master!”
During every American tour I loved renewing my
visits to Sacconi; when Herrmann retired from the business, I went to see him
at Wurlitzer's; I left bows to be haired, and also had an appraisal done of a
Carlo Giuseppe Testore that I'd acquired at an auction in London. He was always
so happy to see me again, and always received me with his habitual fervor, as
if we'd just left each other the day before.
I saw him again in the late 60's in Cremona
when he was holding courses in violinmaking. I went with my colleague Baldovino
to show him a violin that we had found in London, a Guarneri del Gesù with an
exceptionally beautiful tone; we weren't sure of the authenticity of the
instrument, though. Sacconi examined it with great care and said that it really
was a Guarneri del Gesù, recognizable partly because of a tiny point of ebony
that Guarneri inserted on the inside of the back to mark the thickest point of
the wood. I met Sacconi still another time in Cremona some years later together
with the late Engineer Paolo Peterlongo, who wanted him to adjust the Fontana
(ex-Oistrakh) Stradivari violin in his well-known collection, a stupendous
violin that I have had the chance to play often, and which was harder to play
after that adjustment, but much more brilliant.
I think that as far as knowledge of instruments
and, in particular, of their restoration is concerned, Sacconi was perhaps the
most important man the violin world has had in the last decades. Such erudition
was illuminated by a most precious humane attitude; he was completely unselfish
and had an absolutely rare love for his work. It was really a pleasure to
observe his joy at the sight of a beautiful instrument. I hope all he sowed
will bear fruit in the future through his various and numerous pupils.
Trieste, Italy, June 7,
1985
Taken from the book: «From Violinmaking to Music: The Life and Works of Simone Fernando Sacconi», presented on December 17, 1985 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (Cremona, ACLAP, first edition 1985, second edition 1986, pages 269-270 - Italian / English).
© 2023 - In memory of Simone Fernando Sacconi in the 50th Anniversary of his death