Guarneri’s Cello Returned to Owner... Free of Charge

A Lviv-based ethnic Armenian has been keeping for ten years a violoncello made by the great seventeenth-century Italian master Andrea Guarneri. Now the keeper has returned the cello — at his own will and without any gratuity — to Armenia, the true owner. At an official ceremony in Yerevan, the Ministry of Culture of Armenia handed over the rarity valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars to Martin Yeritsian, curator and master restorer of the state collection of rare musical instruments. The point is the Ministry of Culture of Armenia purchased precisely this violoncello in 1948 in Moscow from Sergei Aslamazian, one of the founders of the Komitas Quartet, for two thousand rubles, and this instrument was part of the Armenian state collection of 23 rare bow instruments. It happened, however, that in 1982 musicians smuggled the instrument from Armenia to Lviv, but nobody knew for a long time who exactly kept it.

“When it became necessary, we invited an expert,” says Karlo Sarkisian, chairman of Lviv oblast’s Armenian community. “He confirmed that it was a Guarneri cello in a very good condition. The only thing he noted was that if an instrument is not used for some time, its strings should be slackened off. This is a requirement for keeping bow instruments. But perhaps nobody ever dared to touch the cello...”