BY JESSIE WANG, LEAD WRITER (COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL AWARENESS)
If you’re a string player, have you ever wondered how your instrument is made?
Sure, you might know the different parts of the instrument, and what needs to be done before putting them together. But have you thought about the importance of visualising any details, judging proportions and shapes in three dimensions, and the extreme control needed over the required tools?
That’s what Romano Crivici and Carla Thackrah’s documentary The Last Violin aims to show you. Named to demonstrate the last working days of arguably Australia’s most famous violin maker Charalambos (Harry) Vatiliotis (pictured above), the documentary celebrates the skills of this profession that takes a whole life to master, and much more.
We chat to Romano Crivici – composer, performer, and one of the documentary makers – about this film.
Hi Romano, thanks so much for chatting with CutCommon. You’re co-producing a documentary called The Last Violin. Tell us what that is about.
Charalambos (Harry) Vatiliotis, generally acknowledged as Australia’s greatest living master violin maker, has reached 85 years of age. Starting to feel his years, he is also struggling to look after his wife Maria, who is quite frail and increasingly suffering from dementia. This has made it difficult to keep making: ‘I’ve lost my mojo,’ he tells us.
I commission him to make me my last violin, which, as the process unfolds, begins to look like it will be Harry’s last violin as well. As my partner Carla Thackrah and I began filming the process, Harry’s stories started to come out, spontaneously, in between strokes of his chisel, or cuts with his gouge – stories and reflections from the whole of his life, both musical and personal.
What a beautiful story! And how do you know Harry?
I can’t quite remember the moment when I actually met Harry, but on the advice of [conductor and violinist] Robert Pikler, a wise teacher of mine in the 1970s, I went to see him.
I was a young student in my early 20s, looking for the ‘ultimate’ instrument. The best old instruments were totally out of my price range back then, just as they are now, but my teacher knew I would get what I needed from Harry.
We ‘clicked’ straightaway. We were both migrants – I was from the Balkans, while he was from Cyprus – sharing an obsession with creating the ideal sound, as well as an interest in the Stoic Philosophers of old. We became lifelong friends.
Wow! What is a particular memory you have with Harry?
I played in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, then the New England String Quartet, in the 1980s and 90s, leaving to focus on composing and performing with my own quartet – the Elektra String Quartet. So I was very familiar with the psychology involved when players assess an instrument.
This was also an obsession with Harry, given he always suffered as a maker from the constant judgement that modern instruments could not be as good as old ones. Ironically however, when players are ‘blindfolded’ and asked to compare expensive old violins with modern ones, they would usually identify the modern one as the better sound – more power, depth, and ‘cutting’ power with a subtler and more beautiful sound.
Because I was a member of the SSO and the Queensland Theatre Orchestra, I was able to organise sessions in the concert hall at the Sydney Opera House, and QPAC in Brisbane, with my various Harry instruments, comparing them to old ones. I have witnessed first-hand the surprise of players, on a number of occasions, when they realised they had chosen the modern as the superior instrument, fully expecting it to have been the old and very valuable one!
What made you decide to make a documentary on Harry’s life as a violin maker?
Harry has become an institution in Australian musical life over the past 69 years. He has quietly made hundreds of string instruments for Australian and international musicians. Apart from the prodigious numbers he’s made – 800 to date, including violins, violas, cellos and double basses – it is their incredible quality which impresses.
Harry has become an icon, whose recognition is now growing far beyond our shores, and that in itself is a story that needs to be told. A largely uneducated migrant from Cyprus who found his passion and his incredible talent here in Australia.
However, just as important is our attempt at documenting for future generations of makers and players some of the incredible breadth and depth of experience and wisdom he has attained over his almost 70 years of work.
Towards this end, we are producing a parallel film for those fellow obsessives and makers that focuses on the detailed and lengthy processes he engages in to make a violin.
That’s so important to follow the process needed to make a violin, as it’s something we don’t often think about. Other than documenting Harry’s life and the violin-making process, what else can we expect from the documentary?
Apart from following the process of creating a violin from start to finish – from choosing the wood, the model, to the actual making – we see a master struggling with illness and difficulties, joyfully getting ‘into the zone’ to produce an amazing masterpiece: The Last Violin.
For the final scene, this violin – his 800th – is played by one of Australia’s hottest young soloists Allie Osborne, who has recently returned to Australia after holding the position of acting associate concertmaster with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC.
As well as the virtuoso piece Allie plays at the very end of the film, the rich soundtrack is all original music composed by me for the film – okay, so I am biased! – culminating in an excerpt from my fourth String Quartet, played on a set of Harry’s very last instruments.
In fact, the whole soundtrack is played on Harry’s instruments.
What is something about violin making you learnt while making this documentary?
I thought I knew a lot about violin making. I’ve owned 12 of Harry’s instruments, and The Last Violin is my 13th! I sat with him a lot of the time when he made them, but it is only now, when looking at the process we have recorded, that I realise the unique skillset required. In particular, the mental skills of visualising, judging proportion and shape in three dimensions, and the almost balletic control he demonstrates with his tools. It’s a quality that’s revealed throughout the whole film. At first glance, it always looked easy; well, he made it look easy. But after, that, I realised, is one of the qualities of a master – they always make it look easy.
In Harry’s own words, “you’ve got to have an inner vision or image of the sound you want to produce, and that’s what guides everything that you do from then on. If you have that, then everything just flows”.
That’s such a lovely quote – thank you for sharing. What are you hoping people will get out of watching this documentary, then?
Different people will get different things, as they always do!
Some will get insights into the incredible complexity and subtlety and skill required in the creation of a great instrument. Even professional string playing friends of mine were blown away by how much is involved when they saw excerpts from our then-not-quite-finished film.
Instrument makers, living and as-yet unborn, will get insights into the larrikin-like nature and life of this unique genius who last year received an AM for his outstanding services to instrument making in Australia since the 1950s.
Other people would be inspired by the story of someone who, holding fast to a vision, worked tirelessly towards its realisation over a lifetime – always self-critical, always open to learning, and always humble about the whole thing.
But in the end, as Carla and I began filming, we realised the core of this film is about the undying love and loyalty of a couple who have lived through all the vicissitudes of life and a changing world. As they become frail with age, they still stand by each other, no matter what, rejoicing in each other’s presence.
It’s certainly been an enriching and transformative process for both Carla and I, and we feel deeply honoured to have been invited into their world.
All of these possibilities sound beautiful. Before you go, you’ve mentioned before that the skill of hand-making a fine violin in the traditional way is a dying art. If so, how can people support the future of violin making?
This documentary celebrates the wisdom, love, and arts skills that take a whole lifetime to master. We feel the traditional arts are suffering inordinately in a world becoming increasingly focused on instant gratification and surface celebrity.
With the documentary, we’re hoping to create an enduring and beautiful record of the work of this Australian master as he shares his thoughts and techniques based on 70 years of experience. Making this film available to as wide an audience as possible will further the process, and inspire a new generation of makers and musicians.
We have dodged around COVID-19 over the year-and-a-half of filming, and have finally completed most of the shooting. We hope the film will be finished mid-this year.
To watch a trailer for The Last Violin, or to contribute to the documentary’s fundraising campaign, visit the Documentary Australia Foundation website. You can also follow the project on Facebook in Romano and Carla’s public group.
Images supplied.
