David Bragger plays Edden Hammons' "Big Hoedown" on the "Duke of Alacantara" Stradivarius.
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The instrument was named after an 18th century Spanish nobleman who was referred to as the "Duke of Alcantara." The instrument was also allegedly owned by Napoleon I of France in the early 19th century. The violin was owned by Albert Caressa later in the 19th century. He sold it from his shop in Paris to a collector, Erich Lachmann of Berlin. In 1925, Lachmann sold the instrument to Dr. Steiner-Schweitzer, a collector in Switzerland. In 1929, the Stradivarius was bought by Rudolph Wurlitzer in New York and it was later transferred to one of his properties in Cincinnati.In 1945, the violin was sold to Ilya Schkolnik, the newly appointed concertmaster to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. In the late 1950s, he moved to Los Angeles and the instrument was sold to oilman Milton Vedder. He died shortly after and his wife, Genevieve Vedder, donated it in 1961 to the University of California, Los Angeles's music department (now the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music). Professor of violin and musicology Marrocco Thomas performed on the Stradivarius until 1967. The instrument was later embroiled in a decades-long mystery involving a disappearance and theft before being reunited with UCLA. This instrument is valued at around $2,290,000.
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