Yes, it may be that metal strings were used first, but I don't think so,
most
of strings on that time were made of gut. Of course that concert players
like
Oistrack and Rostropovich had access to good strings, but I wonder about the
type
of strings most musicians used.

My daugther played in a student's audition the other day and I've noticed
that most of
the bad sound of most instruments there came from the bad Chinese strings on
them.

What I know about Russian instruments is only what I see played by
Russian musicians here.

Ciao!

www.manfio.com



On 7/6/09, ivan_ptizelov <ptizelov@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> I know of several good Russian makers, but none of them are well known (or
> even known at all) in the West because the Soviet Union made it nearly
> impossible to export the instruments (and it's still expensive - export
> duties are ridiculous). So it's a bit hard, from the Western perspective, to
> understand whether there actually was a school, and even harder - unless you
> have a lot of exposure to those instruments, i.e. you spend a lot of time in
> Russia - to judge the quality of those instruments.
>
> As for the quality of the strings, the arts were generally well supported
> in Soviet Russia, but even if that didn't extend to the manufacture and/or
> import of good strings, the musicians at the time would certainly stock up
> while on tour. And if they were forced to obtain strings that way, I would
> suspect that they would prefer metal strings to gut, because metal lasts
> longer... I can say that in the 1990s it was possible to buy decent
> Russian-made strings in Russia, although they weren't always easy to find.
>
> --- In viola@yahoogroups.com <viola%40yahoogroups.com>, luis claudio
> manfio <lmanfio@...> wrote:
> >
> > Most probably your instrument was strung with gut strings when it was
> made.
> > I wonder
> > about the quality of the strings because iin 1939 Russia was a Comunist
> > country, closed
> > to the good strings made in western Europe.
> > It's interesting that Russia developed quite a lot in string playing and
> > teaching, but was not
> > able to develop a good violin making school.
> > www.manfio.com
>
>
>


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