A California woman wanted to sell a violin in New York after inheriting it from her ex-husband. The violin expert Phillip Injeian recognised the instrument as a Stradivarius which has been stolen from Polish violinist Roman Totenberg 35 years ago. Injeian reported it to the FBI who contacted Totenberg’s daughter.
Roman Totenberg was born in Warsaw in 1911, and enjoyed a distinguished career as a violinist and a scholar, working with greats such as Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Leopold Stokowski and Arthur Rubinstein. He died in 2012 at the age of 101.
The Stradivarius violin was made in 1734, and is known as the Ames Stradivarius, once belonging to George Ames who performed with it in the late 19th century. It was stolen in 1980 from Totenberg’s office at the Longy School of Music of Bard College where he worked during that period.
