RIN:130 Famous Fake Found: Recovering the CSO's Red-Hot Montagnana Viola

A great many years ago, we began our now-famous -- some would say infamous! -- educational campaign to reveal the prevalence of deception, commercial bribery, and outright fraud in violin merchandising. Fiddle fraud, as we sometimes jokingly call it, is rampant indeed. One way of proving the point is to collect supporting instances from a wide range of dealers in Chicago, the United States, and the world. But sometimes a single event is so telling, and carries such force, that it renders the accumulation of example after example virtually unnecessary.

2. We at Fritz Reuter & Sons--violin makers and dealers and, also, publishers of REUTER’S FOCUS REPORT -- recently found ourselves in the middle of such an event. Wednesday, 17 June 1998, hardly appeared to be an unusual day. I, Fritz Reuter, was at work in my shop on Touhy Avenue in Lincolnwood, hardly a mile beyond one of Chicago’s north-western borders.

"Mr. Heiss Meets the Instrument of his Undoing." by Dave McBride

Also see Articles from:
Chicago Sun-Times 6/23/98.
FOX NEWS 6/22/98, and
Chicago Tribune (6/22/98, 6/23/98, and $10,000 Reward).

In connection with the discovery of the Fraudulently labeled Viola, we've written to the Illinois Attorney General regarding the Chicago Violin MAFFIA, which speaks about the exploitation of the unwary and often trusting consumer.

3. It was early afternoon. In through our front door came one Robert Heiss, a well-dressed gentleman of 71 years -- accompanied by an equally well-dressed lady companion. He had brought with him, he told me, a Stradivarius violin whose value he hoped to discover. Here are some of his story’s variations. One, the fiddle had come to him as part of an inheritance. Or, two, he had found it by accident. Or, three -- this was a later claim, advanced when Mr. Heiss was interviewed by the Chicago police -- he had purchased it at a flea market.

4. The tales he was spinning didn’t seem to weave a completely coherent pattern, but I welcomed our visitor and proceeded to examine his "violin." As Mr. Heiss was later reported to have said: "I thought it was a fiddle and threw it in the closet. I wasn’t under any obligation to return it." In any case, the fiddle turned out to be, not a fiddle--a violin--but a viola. Since I am an expert appraiser, it also did not take me long to discover that the violin-viola was not a Stadivarius but a "Montagnana"-- supposedly, I was later to learn, a 1723 creation of Venice’s Dominicus Montagnana.

5. But why have I placed quotation marks around a great master maker’s name? After all, I could see a label inside of the instrument, and it did in fact spell out the name MONTAGNANA. But fake labels are more than common in the violin business when it descends (as is too often the case) to the violin racket. The violin which was not a violin, the Stradivarius which was not a Stradivarius, was all-too-obviously a Montagnana viola which was not -- which could not be --a Montagnana viola. It was a viola, for sure, but hardly a Montagnana. For starters, its varnish was utterly unlike that applied by any eighteenth-century Venician maker. Then there was a simple matter of which I was almost certain, but which I double-checked by reference to an authoritative census of Montagnana’s works.

Montagnana never made a viola, not one.

6. Throughout his long career as a master craftsman, he had made a great many violins and celli -- but never, absolutely never, a viola. The pseudo-Montagnana was a lovely instrument, probably an Austrian creation of the early 19th century. In Chicago alone, it had a long history of serving talented virtuoso performers admirably. It was a responsive, resonant, beautiful instrument -- but not from Montagnana’s hands. It was not Italian. It was not even from the century in which Montagnana lived and practiced his art. It was, in short, a beautiful fake.

7. I suppose that many people will probably say: "So what’s the big deal? If you own a painting and you love looking at it, who cares if you later find that it’s not really the work of _________ Lots of folks have enjoyed the music played on the Chicago Symphony’s ‘Montagnana’--and, since l950, it has been the cherished prize of CSO principal violists. Why worry?" And they may add--incidentally making a point whose impact and seriousness they do not recognize:

". . . a beautiful fake is still beautiful."

8. Of course it is. But there goes the superstition, which claims that, when it comes to stringed instruments the older the better. Besides, the Hartford Insurance company might see the whole matter in a very different light--a light which illuminates, and thus brings out of the dark, what could properly be called the shady side of the violin business.

9. The Hartford had insured the instrument for $175,OOO--no small sum. I, however, must go back to something asserted earlier. The viola neither was nor is a Montagnana creation. As an antique instrument, it is hardly worth any such amount as that for which it was insured. My best professional judgment appraises the Fair-Market-Value of the pseudo-Montagnana at $40,000 -- $135,OOO less than the amount for which it was insured. Nor was my appraisal the result of days-long, exhausting detective work. It took no more than a few minutes with the viola for me to determine that it was, and I am inclined to say certainly was, … not a Montagnana at all. Of course, since it had been appraised in 1991 as a premier Venetian product, the Hartford Insurance Company had been obligated -- as its insurer -- to pay the Chicago Symphony Orchestra the full $175,000 when efforts to recover the instrument failed.

10. Here’s the story. In the fall of 1996, the CSO’s principal violist, Charles Pikler, had been loading his car, parked on South Columbus Drive--and had ended up loading in everything except his instrument. When he returned to the place where he’d been parked, only a few minutes later, the "Montagnana" was gone. The CSO then placed ads in prominent newspapers offering a "REWARD for the return of a viola and four bows, owned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, lost in the vicinity of 170 S. Columbus Drive on September 18, 1996." Since the ads did not yield the instrument’s return, the Hartford forked over $175,000.

11. And, when the instrument was recovered, the Chicago Symphony was obligated to return $175,000 to Hartford. As for me, the Hartford awarded me $10,000 as a reward for my role in the instrument’s recovery--and, with the Chicago Symphony, presented that award at a June 25 joint news conference. During the news conference, I explained that--prior to the recovery of the "Montagnana" -- I had already filed a petition with Illinois’ Attorney General. To simplify, my petition asked for an investigation of fraudulent practices within the violin business.

12. So, I now want to draw your attention to the story which lies largely concealed behind the public story. How did a stringed instrument of such relative modest value -- i.e., such modest monetary value -- come to be insured by one of the great insurance companies as an instrument of such incredible worth?

13. I feel a lot like the expert geologist who--when asked to evaluate the late Aunt Matilda’s wedding ring, the one that has been passed down in the family for several generations--has to tell the inheritors that the ring is very pretty but that its precious "stone" is a paste-and-water job. In short, it is not at all the precious item which everyone has taken it to be -- since l991! If you will, however, think over the "Montagnana" business for a moment more. To be insured for 175,000, the "Montagnana viola" had to have been appraised and certified -- and this by persons whose judgments were deferred to as "authoritative." To say this in a somewhat different way, Mr. Heiss may not have been fully honest. But what are we to think of all those who presumably appraised, authenticated, and certified the "Montagnana" -- an obviously fine-quality fake -- as a collector’s item worth roughly four times as much as its real, fair market value? Who has been deceiving whom? Did those who appraised the instrument make a serious but honest mistake? In other words, were they decent but incompetent appraisers? Or did they know that the "Montagnana" -- something like the "secret" of Stradivarius -- was a mythical beast? Did they radically over-value this particular viola because their expertise as appraisers was itself a fake? Were they genuinely incompetent? Or were they colluding in a kind of deception vis-à-vis old instruments -- thereby gaining a larger fee for themselves, since the charge for an appraisal is often a percentage of the monetary value which the appraiser ascribes to the instrument? Were they willing participants in a mode of dissembling which has, for far too long, been integral to the way dealers price fine stringed instruments? Were they knowing parties to a mode of "operating" which has fleeced countless collectors, musicians, families of aspiring young musicians, . . . and insurance companies? Clearly, if the CSO and its principal violist Charles Pikler value the pseudo-Montagnana for its incomparable quality as a performing instrument, then the notion that "older is better" is through and through nonsensical. As we like to say at Fritz Reuter & Sons, Stradivarius made new violins! The CSO’s experience vindicates our claim -- new master-made instruments are often equal, even superior to, their older rivals.

14. It is all too easy to condemn Mr. Heiss as a failed con-man. And it misses the more important point -- a point which will be sharpened (to a perhaps painful degree?) as Mr. Heiss’s attorney proceeds with his defense. The defendant has been charged with one count of felony theft. Thus his acquisition of, and attempt to sell, the "Montagnana" put him at grave risk. He may be convicted of a criminal violation.

15. As part of an effort to reduce the seriousness of the charge, his attorney has good reason to put the authenticity of the instrument in question. If he can show that his client -- even granting that he committed a felonious act -- attempted to sell a relatively-inexpensive instrument, rather than an heirloom, he can probably mitigate the seriousness of the charge. And, as part of the defense strategy, I nay well be asked to serve as an Expert Witness.

16. That is why this story must end with a teaser: TO BE CONTINUED. For as this matter proceeds to trial, Mr. Heiss’s attorney will gain access to all of the documentation which led the Hartford Insurance Company to issue a policy pegging the pseudo-Montagnana viola at a value of $175,000. In turn -- if I actually undertake the responsibilities of an Expert Witness -- I shall be responsible for reviewing each and every document purporting to establish the instrument’s monetary value. Then, as we move to trial, all of the documentation -- including the names of those who prepared and signed the varied papers which authenticated the "Montagnana" -- will become a matter of public record.

17. The final story will not be simply the tale of Mr. Heiss’s misrepresentation. Since the "Montagnana" was given to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the l950’s, it will be the story of the ways in which a fake was certified as genuine -- for nearly fifty years. Who provided the documentation? What, if anything, did they take into consideration -- or claim to have taken into consideration -- in preparing the certificate of authenticity and various certificates of appraisal? How was this misrepresentation carried out -- and by whom? Answers now wait upon the pre-trial process of discovery. But we urge that you not "touch that dial." I strongly suggest that the story is only beginning -- that, due to a series of accidental encounters, a great deal of the racketeering side of the fine fiddle business is about to become public.