When Jennifer Koh was told by her agent about the theft of a Stradivarius violin that was untimely ripped this week from the hands of the concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the news struck her like a knife. While newspaper reports focused on the $6m estimated value of the instrument, and the dramatic details of the robbery, she could only feel a overwhelming sense of loss.



“For us, our instrument is priceless, we can’t think of it in terms of millions of dollars,” says Koh, a virtuoso violinist currently on tour in Germany. “The violin is an extension of ourselves, and to take it away is like losing a kidney.”

On Monday night at about 10.30pm, a robber armed with a stun gun set upon Frank Almond in the parking lot of Wisconsin Lutheran College, where he had just performed Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. As Almond fell stunned to the ground, the robber grabbed his instrument and made off with it in a mini-van driven by an accomplice.

The instrument in question was the “Lipinski” Stradivarius, which Almond has played on loan from an anonymous donor since 2008. Made by Antonio Stradivari in 1715, when the master craftsman was at his peak, it is among the world’s most envied instruments – by musicians and collectors alike.

The news that armed robbers had targeted such a celebrated musical instrument has sent jitters throughout the rarified world of professional musicians in Milwaukee and far afield. The apprehension is all the more intense in that Strads – of which fewer than 650 remain in circulation – are virtually impossible to sell on the black market, suggesting that the theft may well have been conducted to order.

“Everyone is in shock that something like this could happen,” said Joseph Bein, an expert in rare string instruments at the world-renowned Bein & Fushi dealership in Chicago. “There’s really nothing that can be done with a fiddle like this – there’s no potential resale because it's such a small universe.”

Korinthia Klein, owner of Korinthian Violins in Milwaukee, said that “what was so distressing was that it was seized violently. For it to have been snatched from Frank’s hands was unbelievable, new and quite frightening.”

Almond came into Klein’s shop recently to have a bow repaired, and gave her the chance to hold the Lipinski Stradivarius. “It’s a particularly beautiful instrument. Like all Stradivari’s work, it is very precise and very lovely. For me, as a violin maker, to have it in my hands was an extraordinary privilege,” she said.

Almond has not spoken publicly about the theft, on the advice of police. But he has used his Facebook page to thank friends for their words of encouragement, and to leave a folorn message under a picture of the missing violin: “Anybody seen this please let me know because I miss it.”

Almond’s relationship with his instrument extended to making a recording dedicated to it. On the CD, A Violin’s Life: Music for the ‘Lipinski’ Stradivari, he performed pieces with a direct connection to the instrument including the Devil’s Trill Sonata by Giuseppe Tartini, the first known owner of the “Lipinski”, and a work by the Polish violinist Karol Lipinski, after whom it is named, who owned it between about 1818 and his death in 1861.

In a video made by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before the theft, Almond discusses his love of the instrument and the exceptional sound it produces. It is “incredibly even and powerful through the entire range of the instrument, there are no dead spots. All the way up you get that same focus and intensity, that is really unheard of.”

In separate comments, he expressed his gratitude towards the unidentified donor who had given the Strad to him on permanent loan. “That was fantastic, certainly the greatest ending I could possibly have – I get to play it every day. I’m sort of passing through its life.”

This is not the first time that exceptionally valuable instruments have gone walkabout. In 1936, the 1713 Gibson Strad was stolen from the Carnegie Hall changing room of the Polish virtuoso Bronislaw Huberman, only resurfacing in 1988 when the thief, an amateur musician, admitted having swiped it. The instrument is now played by Joshua Bell.

In 2008, Grammy-nominated violinist Philippe Quint forgot his Strad on the back seat of a taxi from Newark airport in New Jersey. When the cabdriver returned the $4m instrument to him a few desperate hours later, Quint expressed his gratitude by giving an impromptu concert at the airport’s taxi rank.

Jennifer Koh, who is known for her laser-focused performances across a wide range of musical forms, talks passionately about the relationship violinists build with their instruments, and the bereavement that can ensue when they are separated. Though she has never lost a violin or had one stolen, she did go through a form of bereavement when she had to part with the 1727 General Dupont Strad after its owners, who had loaned it to her for the previous 13 years, were forced to retrieve it.

That was almost five years ago and yet, every year at around this time in the calendar, she is taken by grief. “I find myself asking why I’m feeling so sad, and then I remember, it’s the anniversary of losing the Dupont. Even now, years later, I don’t want to know where it went or who now has it – it’s too hard for me to process.”

Just two weeks ago Koh performed the Berg violin concerto with the Milwaukee symphony orchestra, standing just feet away from Almond and the now missing Lipinski Strad. She muses about the intense bond between player and violin, surmising that “maybe it’s because we hold the instrument so close, attaching it to our bodies, that it becomes part of you.”

She likens the feeling to the ties between parent and child. “It becomes a part of us, our voice, and that’s why losing that is the most painful experience that a violinist can have.”