Left-to-right here are Assi, Amnon, yours truly, Mike Edwards, and Karen Shackleford. I don’t remember what Mike was saying, but I am clearly in agreement with whatever it was.
Now, Amnon was not on the ‘train near Magdeburg,’ so you may wonder why we’re interviewing him. We’re hoping he’ll be involved in the finished product of this film, specifically with our musical score.
You may be familiar with the Violins of Hope project and collection, dedicated to reclaiming and restoring violins confiscated from Jews by the Nazis. (If you’re not familiar, there is an excellent overview on Wikipedia.)
It is right to call Amnon the heart of The Violins of Hope project. He gives it life, he is the center of its being, and he toils away without ceasing.
Today we were honored to visit with Amnon in his workshop. It is a small space in an unremarkable building in Tel Aviv where he works with his son Avshalom to locate, acquire, assess violins that survived the Holocaust — many of them hundreds of years old — and to ensure that they are saved for the future. Whenever possible, the collection’s most treasured violins are played in concerts by master musicians in whose hands the long-silent instruments find their voice again.
“They speak,” says Amnon. “They remember.”
Very often the repair and restoration of the violins means taking them completely apart, meticulously reshaping parts, and then painstakingly putting them back together. Not a task to be done quickly, or without an encyclopedic knowledge of every aspect of this exacting art and craft.
Amnon listens with well-earned pride as a retored violin’s strings are stirred to life by an immensely talented young musician.
More on that violinist — and the violin — in another post!
Matthew Rozell, Amnon Weinstein, and Mike Edwards admire one of the most exquisite of the restorations…