In defense of cheap musical instruments

Virtuoso’s trip destroys priceless Stradivarius

…David Garrett, 26, one of the nation’s foremost young concert performers, had an accident that every world-class musician must dread: at the end of a concert at the Barbican he tripped and landed on his violin.

The instrument is a 290-year-old Stradivarius, so rare that it would be almost impossible to estimate its value. Certainly there are people who would have gladly paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for it, before its glamorous owner did a turn as Mr Bean….

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Yikes! Puts the scratches and dings on my Fenders in perspective.