“I used to think: this is such a nice profession, I die with a piece of wood in my hands under the workbench. But I also have other hobbies and fun things.” And that is why violin builder Peter Brandt stops his profession and closes his studio in Assen. It is an end of forty years of violin buildings at the highest level.
His violins are played all over the world, a real burn costs around 10,000 euros. The violin builder is working on it for two months. “Every violin builder knows why a violin sounds good or bad. That way you can only make good violins,” Brandt explains his success.
If you walk into the Atelier of the Assenaar on the Zuidersingel, you will not immediately get the idea of a studio with masterpieces. In a cupboard on the left are fifteen violins for a few tens or even less. If you go further inside, ponytails hang on the ceiling in his workshop. Tails of a Siberian stallion and an ordinary black horse. He makes the strings for a bow. Spread are dozens of saws, chisels, gushes, hammers and glue clamps.
“Over the years I have all bought violins at flea markets and such. If I have time, I will repair them, I will make them back in order.” Ticking out, puting new strings on it. Those violins are then rented out, or does it sell them to children or people who don’t have much to spend. But the fun in repairing is a bit off, it started to look like work. “In all those years I have seen all possible repairs pass by. It is time for something else, although I continue to build violins.”
If you listen to Brandt, you don’t hear a Drenthe tongue. That is not strange either. He starts in Rotterdam, after graduating from the Department of Musical Instrument Technology of Guildhall University in London. His grade list consists of nines and Tienen, several times the term comes excellent past. After a few years in Rotterdam, he moved to Assen 35 years ago.
In his studio he builds on a strong reputation and countless violins. The secret? “If you instruct ten violin builders with the same material to make the same violin, then all instruments will sound different. The difference is in the wood, because every tree is different. Just stand in front of a tree in a forest. If you saw planks of it, each plank is different. One shelf was sitting on the north side of the tree, the other on the south side, for example.”
For its violins, Brandt uses maple wood on the rear and side and pine for the front. A type of wood that is also called pan -lattice wood, the cheapest species in the hardware store. But certainly not every plank is eligible for it. “This wood comes from cold regions, close to the tree line. That is important, because then the tree grows regularly and slowly. As a result, the annual rings are very close together and that makes it a turbo wood.”
In recent days, customers were able to say goodbye to Brandt and part of the household effects were for sale. He was unable to find a successor. Only a colleague from Gouda takes over some things. And that is perhaps better, because Brandt continues to build new violins. But don’t expect any more experiments from his part.
“Everything has already been tried, such as with different types of wood,” laughs the violin builder. “That happened mainly in the nineteenth century. Everyone was looking for the new Stradivarius and then said,” This is the egg of Columbus. ” There are books about it, but it’s all nonsense. “
No crazy things, burns no more dreams. Although, it would be nice that they see the new Stradivarius in him in three hundred years.