Forgotten instruments

Forgotten instruments - Stewart Pollens

Stewart Pollens is an expert on historical musical instruments. His work includes restoration, analysis, and scholarly publication; and it embraces keyboard instruments (the harpsichord and fortepiano) as well as historical stringed instruments such as the violin and cello. Andrew Manze has called him "one of the world’s foremost authorities on musical instruments." Pollens's research findings include the source of the design for the decorative inlay of Stradivari 's "Greffuhle" violin and a chemical analysis of Stradivari's violin varnish. In 1999, Pollens challenged the authenticity of the world's most famous violin, the Ashmolean Museum's Messiah Stradivarius, in a series of articles published in the Journal of the Violin Society of America. The controversy initiated by these articles and presentations at the Violin Society of America and the American Federation of Violin Makers was widely reported.