“If you’ve seen one Stradivarius, you’ve seen them all.”
That’s a classic line from the 1963 movie, The Pink Panther. In one scene, the ever-bumbling Police Inspector Jacques Clouseau attempts to serenade his wife to sleep with his horrible violin playing. After she convinces him to put his violin away, he ends up stepping on it and totally destroying his priceless Stradivarius.
It seems that here in Washington, we have the same attitudes towards not only seeing a Stradivarius, but having it played by a world-renowned violin virtuoso. In a little experiment by The Washington Post, they set up Joshua Bell, one of the world’s greatest classical violinists to play in a Metro subway station. They filmed the experiment, recording the reactions of commuters as they headed to work one morning. Read the story here.
The results are a bit amazing. And begs the question – Do you need to be in a concert hall to appreciate great music or visit an art museum to appreciate a great painting?
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