[adventurous music] This is one of the finest violins in the world.

Built 300 years ago by the Italian legend Antonio Stradivari.

To date, nobody has mastered his craftsmanship.

In the Swiss Alps, we embark on a search with violin maker Michael Rhonheimer.

He is looking for the perfect wood to build instruments that can equal the masterpieces of Stradivari.

In order to succeed, Michael Rhonheimer will rely on the help of modern science.

Using biological treatment, Swiss researchers try to change the inner structure of the wood to create a unique raw material for instruments of the highest quality.

Will the new violins match the sound of a real Stradivari?

[violin playing] This Stradivari dates from 1702 and is called Vera.

A good violin participates in the performance.

It's like a crystal or a diamond which shines in every color.

The sound of a Stradivari leaves all listeners spellbound.

He was a genius.

[violin playing] Marcus Lehmann received his Stradivari when he was only 19 years old and an up-and-coming talent.

He fulfilled his dream by playing his own Stradivari, but not every young talent has the same opportunities.

A Stradivari can cost from half a million up to $4 million, an investment that young musicians usually cannot afford.

[violin playing] In the 16th century, Cremonese violins became popular as musicians were demanding new instruments that would allow them to express emotion and dazzle with virtuosity.

Cremona led this innovation, and soon Antonio Stradivari became the best known violin maker of the city.

Today, the Stradivari Museum holds many tools and artifacts of his work.

Andrea Mosconi is the curator of this museum.

[Italian spoken audio] There are three big families.

Andrea Amati, he started to build string instruments here in Cremona.

Four generations of the Amati family were followed by three generations of the Guarneri family, and then Stradivari came.

Stradivari was born in 1644.

At that point, the violin was an established instrument.

He reached the age of 93.

He died in 1737 and had constructed more than 1100 instruments.

Half of these are still around today.

One thing is certain: to build more than 1100 instruments, he had to spend most of his life in the workshop.

[Italian spoken audio] Today, there are still hundreds of violin makers who live and work in Cremona.

For the completion of a violin, they need about one month, just as they did 300 years ago.

They still use the same tools and techniques as Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri.

The Stradivari Museum displays the tools and drawings that were used by Antonio Stradivari.

Throughout his life, he was always eager to improve on the designs.

The molds he used were handed down from his master Nicolo Amati.

[Italian spoken audio] He started by studying the instruments of Amati.

Then, during the last decade of the 17th century, he introduced some changes.

He stretched the resonating body a bit.

This was the period of the long violins.

Then in 1700, he returned to his original model and started developing his instruments from there.

[Italian spoken audio] Antonio Stradivari created the most expensive and legendary violins.

But what makes them so unique?

[intriguing music] Scientist of the EMPA, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Material Science and Technology in St. Gallen believe that the wood of Stradivari's instruments is incredibly special.

With a new method they want to treat tonewood used by today's violin makers, to match the wood of Stradivari instruments.

Professor Frances Schwarze is the head of the research group.

[German spoken audio] In discussions with violin makers, I've been told there are two important attributes for good tonewood.

On the one hand, it's the sound velocity.

On the other hand, the density.

If the sound velocity is high and the density is low, the sound emission is higher.

And that's the basis for a first class violin.

I recalled the characteristics of the brittle cinder, a fungus which does not reduce the sound velocity but the density of the wood.

I thought that it may be interesting to see whether this fungus could improve the acoustic characteristics of a violin.

[German spoken audio] Frances Schwarze envisions a unique experiment.

He wants to treat the best tonewood with fungi to reduce the density of the wood.

Likewise, the wood of a real Stradivari happens to be less dense than the wood of a modern instrument.

[German spoken audio] Fungi are the experts when it comes to the decay of wood.

Usually they can destroy all components of the cell walls.

This means that after a while, the wood becomes soft and simply disintegrates.

This is why sometimes a cavity forms in the center of a tree trunk, but the brittle cinder is different.

It also causes the wood to decay, but the stiff skeleton of the cell walls is conserved.

Thus, no cavity forms and the sound can travel directly from A to B.

[German spoken audio] [suspenseful music] The best wood for the experiment is found in the mountains of the Swiss Alps.

Under the alpine climate with more than 300 sunny days a year and tough winters, the mountain spruces grow extremely slowly.

Usually they are straight and have very few branches.

[suspenseful music] Searching for the perfect tree, violin maker and tonewood expert Karl Irniger and Michael Rhonheimer hike up the mountain.

[thumping on wood] This one sounds bad.

There's something foul.

[thumping on wood] [German spoken audio] The sound is this rasping, no clear tone.

There are two tones.

[thumping on wood] [German spoken audio] The sound is deep.

[thumping on wood] But no, it's no good.

[whimsical music] There are many spruces on this slope and the search continues.

[German spoken audio] Here, the tree on the left looks good.

Yes, the left one looks good.

[German spoken audio] [whimsical music] The spruces they are considering are approximately 250 years old.

A few more steps uphill and Karl Irniger has found his favorite tree.

[whimsical music] That's the one.

Nice and straight.

The knocking brings the wood to vibration and reveals its sound quality to Michael Rhonheimer.

This is the one.

[thumping on wood] Yes, let's take it.

[footsteps crunching on snow] After cutting down the tree, the trunk has to rest for three months.

This is important for the reduction of the inner pressure in the tree and the natural drying.

Only now the trunk enters the sawmill.

[wood clunking] [saw buzzing] First, several planks are sawed off the trunk.

After half the tree is gone, the sawmill stops, the other half is taken by Karl Irniger and his motorized saw.

[saw buzzing] Karl always takes care of the tonewood on his own.

[saw engine sputtering] Michael Rhonheimer has arrived at the scene to take part in the selection process.

[German spoken audio] Here it should be just right.

[axe clinking] Together they choose the best parts for the next violin and split the stem into quarters.

[thumping] [axe clinking] [wood splitting] [German spoken audio] [German spoken audio] The wood has to be regular and very straight.

The winter and spring sections should be no wider than two to 2.5mm.

Less is even better.

[German spoken audio] Everyone thinks differently about the resin in the wood.

In my experience, the wood sounds better with resin.

Nevertheless, the resin has to be taken out before carving.

The wood should be light and resin means weight.

When you have a nice pattern in good grain, that's the best.

Look, Michael, this one is better.

It looks good.

[German spoken audio] -It's perfectly straight.

-Okay, I'll try this one.

[German spoken audio] [suspenseful music] But why can't the best tonewood quality of today compete with the wood Stradivari used hundreds of years ago?

[upbeat classical music] At the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape, David Frank examines trees from former times.

He uses the structure of annual rings to reveal the climate of the past.

With this data, he is able to identify dry seasons, humid summers, and also periods of cold.

Under the microscope, he examines the cell structure of the annual rings.

When the rings are evenly arranged, it will make promising tonewood.

In the early summer, the trees tend to produce cells which are much wider and have thinner cell walls, whereas towards the end of the growing season the cells become compressed, and have much thicker cell walls, giving them a higher density.

The trees at high elevations tend to grow much more slowly in comparison to the trees in the in the lowlands, so the trees at the high elevations produce narrower rings, and these rings then tend to be dense in comparison to the wood at low elevations.

[calm music] For David Frank, it is no surprise that freshly cut trees are diff.. compared to those used 400 years ago.

During the height that the great Cremonese violin makers, the climate was different and that also had an effect on the structure of the wood.

The Maunder-Minimum is a period with reduced solar activity, and it's believed that this contributed to the colder temperatures that are reconstructed throughout this time.

So based on the narrow ring widths and lower densities of the trees, we can understand that it's a much cooler time period.

Based on the temperature reconstructions for the Alps that we've produced there, it tends to be the coldest time period over the past millennium.

Between 1645 and 1715, the tonewood from the Alps had extremely narrow annual rings, and therefore an exceptional quality.

[exciting music] At the EMPA laboratories, scientists have started to experiment with the tonewood.

Their task is to find the right kind of fungi and determine the length of treatment.

The scientists have used the Brittle Cinder and other molds to treat thin pieces of tonewood.

The frequency test shows that the scientists are on the right track.

The pieces of wood have increased their resonance frequency.

The researchers are also curious about the stability of the treated wood.

In a device, they first test the flexural strength of the untreated wood.

[exciting music] Then they repeat the experiment with the fungal treated wood.

The test revealed that the fungal treated wood has increased its stability.

The treated sample breaks later and requires more pressure than the untreated wood.

[exciting music] [upbeat classical music] Michael Rohnheimer enters his storeroom where his tonewood is receiving traditional treatment.

Lock it tight.

Storage time.

In the past, I would have said ten years.

Today it's longer because I have so much wood.

The wood is kept here under ideal conditions.

In the summer, it's very hot.

During the winter months, it's very cold.

The wood has to work.

The more it has to go through, the better it is for the instrume..

The wood has to crack where it's weak and when I finally take it down to the workshop, I can be sure that it's gone through a lot.

The wood has suffered.

[upbeat classical music] In his storage room, Michael Rhonheimer searches for several planks of to.. from one single tree.

His task will be to build four identical violins.

Two instruments will undergo fungal treatment, while the other two will remain untreated and serve as a reference.

Once all four violins are built, it will be possible to compare the effects of the fungal treatment in detail.

[intriguing music] But the search for the perfect fungus takes time, as a violin is made of two different kinds of wood.

The researchers also need to identify two different types of fungi for the treatment.

One fungus is needed for spruce wood, which will be used for the top and sides of the violin.

For the maplewood, which is the material for the bottom of the violin, they will need another one.

The fungus for the maplewood was quickly identified and in 2006.

After three years of intensive research, the scientists also identified a mold that seemed to be ideal for the treatment of spruce wood: schizophyllum commune.

In the laboratory, the tone wood is laid on a culture medium and covered up.

These are ideal conditions for the fungus to grow.

In the coming months, the mold will attack the wood cells from the inside without destroying the cell walls.

This means that the sound velocity will not be affected, at least in theory.

The top is closed and the sample is off to the climate chamber.

One set of tonewood will be treated for three months.

A second sample will stay in the climate chamber for nine months.

Swiss town of Baden: Michael Rhonheimer started his workshop 30 years ago.

The art of making violins has not changed for hundreds of years.

[German spoken audio] I've always wanted to build violins because for me it's a multifaceted job that captivates me.

I find it fascinating that you can assemble something so wonderful out of such simple materials.

[German spoken audio] [sawing] It takes Michael Rhonheimer about 300 hours to build a new violin.

His idols are the Italian masters from Cremona.

[German spoken audio] The aim for us today is to be as good as Stradivari or Amati.

We want to reach the maximum, just like they did.

We cannot invent anything new, but we can play with the material.

But we also have to acknowledge that the perfection was already reached many centuries ago.

[upbeat classical music] The astronomical prices of Stradivari instruments have resulted in a tidal wave of thousands of copies and poor imitations.

A friend of Michael Rhonheimer visits him with his latest acquisition.

I found something on the flea market.

I've bought a violin, a real Stradivari.

Let's have a look.

Michael Rohnheimer does not believe in a real bargain buy, and his intuition rarely deceives him.

[upbeat classical music] Every day a Strad and that for 20 years.

He couldn't have possibly built so many.

Made in Germany.

Rohnheimer has seen, touched and studied several real Stradivaris in his life.

You can learn a lot from these old masters, but they are certainly not easy to copy.

[upbeat classical music] [German spoken audio] If this was a real Stradivari, the grading of the colors would be totally different and also the quality of the varnish would not be like this.

The kind of purfling is not right at all.

The whole piece here seems to come from an assembly line.

It is relatively simply built.

The style of the instrument is completely off the mark.

[upbeat classical music] [intriguing music] The University Hospital in Leiden in the Netherlands has become the center of an unusual analyzing method for violins.

Doctor Baron Stoll wants to X-ray classical violins without harming them.

Based on the computer tomography for lungs, he has designed a computer program which measures the wood density.

I got an email from an American violin maker and that was Terry Borman, and it was about two years ago.

He just asked me, could you cooperate?

And it was only at the end that of the email that I just realized that this is not about medical image processing, this is about violins.

And that really struck me because I used to play the violin, but that was long, a long time ago.

Terry Borman had already quite some experience scanning old violins.

So my task would be to optimize that, and try to find the differences between the Cremonese violins and the modern violins.

So we just took a few modern violins and we collected these ancient violence in New York from the different owners and just scan them in one day.

In 2008, Baron Stoll scanned 12 violins, including two Stradivaris.

This was the first direct comparison of wood density between classical and modern violins.

Strikingly, we didn't find any differences in the density.

And so actually, if you take these two different types of wood or from the different violins, actually the density is on average the same.

And that was actually a bit surprising or disappointing even.

But the variation in the densities between the winter and summer grains, these were much more homogenous in the old filings.

And it was by almost a factor of two, so twice as homogenous as modern filings.

So that was quite a big difference.

In the EMPA laboratories, the wood is to be freed from the fungus.

Over the last nine months, the fungus has caused the decaying of the inner parts of the wood.. and thus altered the structure of the tonewood.

On the outside, the mold creates white cocoon looking cysts which nourish from the inner parts of the wood.

The researchers now need to separate the wood from the fungus so that the treatment stops before the cell walls are also attacked.

It is not enough to just scratch off the mold from the surface.

Even the inside of the wood needs to be rid of the decaying fungus.

The scientists use a gas chamber containing ethylene oxide to sterilize the tone wood.

The colorless gas acts as a disinfectant and destroys all fungal remains.

This treatment ensures that the fungus cannot continue to grow and destroy the precious tonewood.

[upbeat classical music] Finally, after the completion of the fungal treatment, it is Michael Rhonheimer's turn.

His challenge: handcrafting four identical violins, two with the treated wood, two with the untreated wood.

All four copies in the style of the Cremonese violins.

The construction of a violin needs a lot of patience, intuition and experience.

First, Michael Rhonheimer works on the lid.

After he has split the massive spruce plate horizontally, he joins the two pieces again to obtain a mirrored pattern.

For the sides of the violin, Michael Rhonheimer prepares thin, plain strips of spruce wood.

With hot steam, he bends them to obtain several pieces of the familiar curved shape.

Afterwards, he will use a frame construction to glue them together.

Now Renheim has to cut the lid out of the spruce plate.

Slowly, he follows the outline with the saw.

[sawing] [clanking] [German spoken audio] You can use instruments to determine a surface curvature, or you can see it and feel it, but I don't measure the thickness of the lid anymore.

I feel it, I sense the material.

[rubbing] His hands carve the wood until the perfect shape emerges.

The edge is softened and the thickness of the wood increases toward the center.

[German spoken audio] When I build two identical violins, one with one without fungal treatment, the weight of the lid differs by ten grams.

That's a cube which is as big as this for spruce wood.

The dimensions of the lids are nearly the same.

Unbelievable that the wood has lost material on the inside so that the sound vibrations are stronger.

It just works.

[soft classical music] With a sharp knife, Michael Rohnheimer carves a notch out of the wood.

Close to the edge of the lid, he fits the black and white purflings.

These are not only decorative, but they are an important element in the sound vibrations.

They create the border between the resonating lid and the bottom of the viol.. [upbeat classical music] [German spoken audio] When I hold the fungal treated wood of the EMPA in my hands, you can tell it's totally different.

It's lighter.

It's a bit more stable and therefore I was able to make the surface curvature a bit higher and thinner.

This has enhanced the sound.

[German spoken audio] [whimsical music] The Swiss soloist Sebastian Bohren has come to Baden to test the first two instruments of this experiment.

The violins have not been varnished yet, but they can be played.

[German spoken audio] The perfect violin, I think it does not exist.

With my violin, it's like this.

The effect accumulates with my own.

So if I play good, really good, then it sounds very good.

And if I play badly, it sounds worse, but there are violins which are much more stable.

These are resilient, but these are also not the right ones because you can't be on a high, but my violin, it really fits me.

But anyway, you never have the ideal violin.

It's a sound that you have in mind.

You can never realize it completely.

[violin playing] Sounds very well.

You have to try the other one.

[German spoken audio] [violin clunking] [German spoken audio] I won't tell you which one is which.

You just have to play.

Oh, this is much more curved.

All right, so.

[violin playing] After he has tested the two violins, he is told which one has received the fungal treatment.

[violin playing] [German spoken audio] The two violins I just played, the one with special treatment and the one without.

Funnily enough, I think the one without treatment is way better because it just responds better.

It plays simply better in my opinion.

[violin playing] The first judgement is a blow to the scientist, but the opinion about a violin is always subjective.

Soloists usually have a very special relationship with their instruments.

[German spoken audio] It's like a symbiosis.

It's something that you know very well, but every day it reveals something new.

It is like a human relationship with the difference that music will never disappoint you.

[whimsical music] Before the violins are varnished Anne Poland passes a sensitive measuring device over the hanging violin.

This way, Michael's assistant measures the resonance profile of an instrument.

At this stage, the shape of the violins could still be corrected in case any adjustments are required.

Anne Poland uses a small hammer to generate vibrations on the lid of the violin.

This way, Michael's assistant measures the basic resonance of the sounding body.

[calm music] Finally, the violin is ready for varnishing.

First, Michael Rosenheimer mixes the yellow and red pigments with different natural resins and oils.

Apart from the quality of the tone, wood and the talent of the violin maker, the varnish is often considered as the third key element for producing a first class violin.

Therefore, most violin makers use their own secret varnishing mixture.

The varnish protects the wood from chemical and mechanical damages, and it also has an important aesthetic role.

A bad mixture can lead to the absorption of sound.

Patiently, Michael Rhonheimer applies layer after layer to the instrument.

The final colour in shading of the varnish is like a signature of the violin maker.

Some experts believe it was the varnishing mixture of Antonio Stradivari which has made his instruments so unique.

But the varnish of Antonio Stradivari is not the only object of myth.

There are also virtually no written documents, drawings or other signs which could reveal the working techniques of Antonio Stradivari.

Only his instruments and tools give some clues as to how he managed to build perfect violins.

Students at the International Violin Making School of Cremona learn how to use the patterns of the great masters.

They have come from all over the world to the birthplace of Antonio Stradivari to learn the traditional craft.

The schooling lasts three years and is followed by the challenge of a lifetime: to copy Stradivari's famous violins.

The collection of the city of Cremona consists of 12 instruments of the great Cremonese masters.

Among them are also four Stradivari on display.

Andrea Mosconi is also responsible for this exhibition.

It is one of the most important collections of the Cremonese violins, and from time to time, Andrea Mosconi opens one of the glass cabinets and plays one of them.

[violin playing] If we want to talk about secrets and myths, here is my opinion.

The instrument has to be built according to the Cremonese school of violin making and then you have to play it for about a hundred years.

Playing such an instrument needs a lot of attention.

You really have to make an effort and give your best.

These are instruments which respond very quickly.

The sound spreads very fast.

Other instruments don't do this.

The instruments from the Cremonese school have exceptional sound qualities, especially if it was built by Stradivari.

He was able to combine the entire knowledge of the Cremonese violin makers in his work.

Three hundred years later, the violins of the Cremonese masters are still the most admired and most expensive violins in the world.

[Italian spoken audio] We know that the greatest musicians of the past, the present and certainly of the future all want to play instruments of the Cremonese school.

And in a way this also gives fame to the city of Cremona.

[Italian spoken audio] All four violins are finished and Michael Rhonheimer takes them to the University hospital in Leiden.

Here the fungi treated violins will be directly compared with the untreated violins.

Has the fungi really reduced the wood density as promised by the scientist?

Berend Stoels will find the answer.

He has special knowledge in scanning violins using computer tomography, and he will now study the four violins of Michael Rosenheimer in detail.

His aim is to verify the impact of the fungal treatment, how the density distribution has changed inside the wood of the four instruments.

[calm music] To enter, of course, a few things.

That you can make the most accurate estimation of the thickness.

The pictures can be read like a map.

You can see all the secrets in the wood of these violins.

Every cut, every movement of the smoothing plane, every single change in the structure of the wood is now visible.

But that's not all.

Berend Stoels can also explore the cells structure inside the wood, which was partially destroyed by the mold.

I've made a color map so that it is wood like.

So it means that the lighter the color, the the more depth that area is.

And if it's black, then it's air, actually, so a very low density.

This is the image of the normal violin, the untreated.

So, we can now make a comparison with the treated wood.

So, you said that these are made from the same pieces of wood, but these are probably the most interesting parts.

Because it definitely seems that they are less dense.

For me, it's really nice to see that again, to see again that a CT scanner is that accurate and that sensitive, to pick up these subtle changes.

Seeing these images, you can see actually that the treatment is doing something.

Even though you cannot make a fair comparison, you can already see that definitely something is happening there.

The hole here on the left side.

[German spoken audio] We have seen that there's a distinct difference between the violin with the fungal treatment and the one without.

The density is different.

I've seen that the longer-treated violins have lost some of their structure, which makes it questionable if a long-term fungal treatment is such a good idea, after all.

I think it was exciting to see my work in the computer tomography scan.

You can see very precisely how I've built them and I remember situations during the handcrafting which I can now see in the images.

You really need to be very accurate and precise in your work, because at the end of the day you can notice it.

I have seen it.

[German spoken audio] Baron Stoll was able to visualize the fungal treatment, but will the reduction in wood density also result in a better sound from the violin?

Kevin Farr works for the German software company GFI tech, and has come to Switzerland to study the new violins with the new three dimensional sound recording technique.

In a music room, he first sets up a ring array with 48 microphones, a camera and the data recorder for the acoustic and optical signals.

Michael Rosenheimer is accompanied by Markus Lehmann with his Stradivari to test the different violins with this system.

[German spoken audio] Good afternoon.

This is the acoustic camera.

Here you can see the microphones and this is the optical camera, which we'll use to videotape the violins.

Mr. Lehmann, it would be great if you can stand there and we're both going to sit next to the computer.

First, Markus Lehmann plays the Stradivari.

Okay, Mr. Lehmann, we are ready.

We can start with the recording.

[violin playing] A special software transcode the sound files into image information.

These signals are then superimposed onto the image of the video camera.

Kevin Farr and Michael Rhonheimer are now able to see the way sound originates and how it travels.

Blue represents the undertones and yellow and red the louder sound.

Markus Lehmann then changes the instrument and first plays the untreated and then a fungal-treated violin of Michael Rhonheimer.

Already during the recordings, small differences become apparent.

The colorful circles indicate where the sound develops in the instrument and how strong it emits.

The software transforms the signals of the 48 microphones and creates a three dimensional image of the generation of sound.

The acoustic camera can visualize the origin of sounds in real-time, including their amplitude, penetration, and reverberation.

Here you can see the difference.

On the right side there is the Stradivari and next to it the Rhonheimer Opus 58.

We can see very clearly that the Stradivari is emitting mainly around the area of the chin, whereas the other violin emits more around the fingerboard.

The difference in sound emission is really very clear.

[German spoken audio] I have noticed that the sound of the violin on the right expands more into the room compared to the violin on the left.

[German spoken audio] Yes, that's right.

The sound of the Opus 58 stays closer to the instrument, whereas the Stradivari captures more of the room.

We can also see a lot more reverberation in the room.

You can actually see how the sound is reflected on the floor.

The differences are very apparent.

[violin playing] The direct comparison between the two new violins of Michael Rosenheimer shows that the fungal treated violin has a stronger sound emission than the untreated instrument.

But compared with the old masterpiece, the Stradivari is in a different league.

Does this conclusion mean that the quality of the Stradivari will never be reached?

[German spoken audio] We have seen how the tones were almost floating away from the Stradivari.

But at the Opus 58, the tones were generated only around this area.

They didn't go any further.

They did not get out of the instrument.

What became clear to me is that we cannot create a sophisticated sound when the violin does not have the basis for it.

Whether we use a fungus or any other treatment, we will only be able to help the musician to access the instrument, to facilitate their sound design on the instrument.

[German spoken audio] Osnabrück, Germany.

A contest has been organized to compare the newly invented fungal-treated violin with a real Stradivari of 1711.

[violin playing] She belongs to the British star violinist Matthew Trusler.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-I'm Michael Rhonheimer, the violin maker.

-Nice to meet you.

-Hey.

-So.

-Yeah.

-Let's see this.

I have been playing the violin since I was three years old, so that's a very long time now.

It's all I know how to do, really.

Every memory I ever have was from a time that I already played the violin.

It kind of is me.

There's.

I don't know what I would do if I didn't play the violin.

-But can I play?

-Yeah, yeah.

[violin playing] For the first time, Matthew holds a fungal-treated violin in his hands.. [violin playing] This is something I had never heard of.

And I keep thinking that people are joking when they say.

when they ask me about this fungi treatment.

It sounds crazy.

It sounds ridiculous, but it's a good idea.

I mean, it's a great idea.

I mean, it's great that people are finding ideas and experimenting and making advances because we want, we need to build great violins.

These Stradivaris, they can't go forever.

We need something new.

[violin playing] After the warmup, Matthew enters the stage and starts with a quite unusual concert He plays the same piece of music five times in a row.

Each time he uses a different instrument.

[violin playing] Afterwards, an expert jury and the audience are to decide which instrument is the best.

During the concert, Matthew Trusler is standing behind a canvas so that neither the jury nor the audience can see which violin he is actually playing.

Will the Stradivari win this blind test, or one of the four Rhonheimer violins?

[violin playing] [applause] [violin playing] The Stradivari of Matthew Trusler is the favorite to win.

She is valued at around $3 million.

Matthew Trusler has been playing her for many years now.

Therefore, he should be able to play her much better than the other instruments.

Will the acoustics in the hall be able to transport this superiority to the audience, and will they notice any differences?

[violin playing] The listeners are actually participants of a conference on forestry in Osnabrück but they are excited to take part in this unique experiment and hand in their vote.

The crowd is complemented with three professional violinists who act as the expert jury, giving their own independent verdict on the instruments.

The experiment also has an economic dimension.

Will there be a difference between a Stradivari, that is valued at around $3 million, and a modern violin with a price tag of less than $50,000?

[violin playing] Only Michael Rosenheimer and Matthew Trusler know in which order the five violins are played.

[violin playing] With a mixture of routine and full concentration, Matthew Trusler pulls the bow along the strings of the final instrument.

He wants to make it as difficult as possible for the audience and the expert jury to draw their conclusions.

Every violin has to sound perfectly.

[violin playing] [applause] Tension mounts as the audience cast their ballots.

Two hundred valid votes are handed in.

I think it was violin number three.

I bet that this was the Stradivari because I had the impression that he was most familiar with it.

I like number three the most and I also think that this was the Stradivari.

I concluded that I preferred number four, and I assume that this may be also the real Stradivari.

The opinion of the audience is one thing, but what are the experts saying?

Two jury members preferred the third violin.

One jury member thought it was number four.

This shows the subjectivity of their judgment.

I am not surprised.

I would have chosen number four as a violinist.

It would have been my favorite but number three is also very good.

I think number three sounded best for me.

Actually I was also convinced that this has to be the Stradivari.

[German spoken audio] With a blink of an eye, violin number three beats number four.

[applause] But which one was the Stradivari?

The Stradivari was number.

four.

[cheers and applause] With violin number three, we have a winner.

It is the violin named Opus 58.

A violin built out of nine months fungal-treated wood.

[applause] The tremendous work over many years of both scientists and violin maker had a happy ending.

[German spoken audio] In my wildest dreams, I never expected That our fungal treated violin.

would win the contest.

A clear vote of the jury and the audience.

I personally thought that number three was the Stradivari.

After the declaration of the vote, Matthew Trusler plays the winning violin.

This was very interesting because people didn't experience it the same way as I do.

These are really lovely violins, these new violins.

They have.

I would buy one, I would play one very happily.

They are fantastic.

But my fiddle is my fiddle and I love it.

And I'm very.

I'm a little sad that it didn't win.

[violin playing] [German spoken audio] I had hoped that one of my violins would win and then the Stradivari would come in second place, but I thought the chances are very low, because Trusler knows his own violin so much better.

I was surprised by how open-mindedly he approached the other violins, and the moment I saw him playing in the back room, I realized there was a realistic chance that the best violin would win.

[violin playing] This experiment could start a new era in violin making, as the fungal treated violins really seem equal to the old Cremonese masterpieces.

But this story sends out another important message: modern science and traditional craftsmanship do not need to be in contradiction with each other.

In fact, they can build on each other and together they can become the true heirs of Antonio Stradivari.

[violin playing]