Stolen Stradivarius violin will sing again

WASHINGTON — After a meticulous restoration that took more than a year, a Stradivarius violin that was stolen from violinist Roman Totenberg and missing for decades is about to return to the stage.

Mira Wang, a violinist who immigrated to the United States from China 30 years ago to study under Totenberg, was scheduled to play the instrument Monday at a private concert in New York, and more performances after that are possible.

The violin known as the Ames Stradivarius is one of about 550 surviving instruments made by Antonio Stradivari, history's most renowned violin maker. Built in 1734, it's likely worth millions of dollars, although it hasn't been appraised since it was recovered.

Phillip Injeian, a Pittsburgh violin maker who helped the FBI recover the stolen instrument, said the Ames Stradivarius would likely sell for between $9 million and $10 million or more.

“Mostly institutions or some wealthy collectors are going to buy it,” Injeian said Monday. “You can only hope that they will be willing to lend it out.”

The violin was stolen in 1980 while Totenberg was greeting well-wishers after a performance in Boston and wasn't recovered until 2015, three years after Totenberg died at age 102.

The presumed thief, journeyman violinist Philip Johnson, was himself dying of pancreatic cancer when he showed his ex-wife a locked violin case in his basement.

Johnson's widow asked Injeian to appraise the violin.

Before Injeian and the widow met, he compared photographs of the violin with photographs of Stradivarius violins and determined it could be the missing Ames Stradivarius, named for George Ames, who owned the violin in the late 19th century. Injeian said the violin has characteristic markings on the wood grain that are “like a fingerprint.”

Injeian and the widow agreed to meet in New York. He informed the FBI before the meeting.

“It's like finding lost gold,” Injeian, a master violin maker with a shop in downtown Pittsburgh, told the Tribune-Review in August 2015.

The widow, a Vietnamese refugee who knew nothing about the instrument she held, voluntarily turned over the violin.

“She was a little dumbstruck, and I felt bad for her. It was not her fault,” Injeian said at the time.

It's not clear how often Johnson played the instrument, but The Washington Post reported that he played it in public as recently as 2011, the year he died.

For Totenberg's three daughters, who like their father had given up hope that they'd see the violin again, its recovery has been a series of joys. Jill Totenberg compared it to “Christmas, even though we're Jewish.”

They'll hear it again at Wang's performance for the first time since it disappeared.

“I'm sure we'll all cry. I'm absolutely sure of it. Whether we cry at the same time is something else, but we definitely will cry,” she said. “When that violin was returned to us, we really felt like our father was back in the room with us that day.”

Another happy surprise: 35 years after it disappeared, the violin wasn't in bad shape. Johnson couldn't take it to a repair shop without being discovered, and he used Super Glue and Elmer's to patch a few spots. It was unplayable because it had no strings and the sound post inside was broken. But when Bruno Price of Rare Violins of New York first laid eyes on the instrument, he was pleased it was so well-preserved. He and the Totenbergs believe Johnson couldn't have played it all that often.

“For us, in the restoration of the violin, it was purely conservation rather than any serious repairs of any kind,” Price said. “So, in a way, the violin is probably in better shape for having been stolen — a horrible thing to say.”

Tribune-Review staff writer Aaron Aupperlee contributed. Reach him at aaupperlee@tribweb.com or 412-336-8448.