$550,000 Strad Violin Stolen at L.A. Airport

What was to be a vacation quickly turned into “a nightmare” for Erich Gruenberg, when his rare Stradivarius violin, valued at $550,000, was stolen shortly after he arrived at Los Angeles International Airport.

“It is irreplaceable,” the 65-year-old English concert violinist said Wednesday. “It is my life.”

Los Angeles police said the Stradivarius, along with a second Hirsch violin valued at $8,000, were stolen Tuesday afternoon, shortly after Gruenberg and his wife, Korshed, arrived from England on a British Airways flight.

“They were taken off a cart after he cleared customs,” said Detective William Martin, the LAPD’s specialist in art theft.

The detective said he believes that the thieves probably did not know the simple, tan-colored oblong case contained violins.

“Unless they had X-ray vision, they couldn’t know what was inside,” Martin said.

Police statistics show there have been an average 181 thefts a month at the airport so far this year, or about six a day.

On Wednesday, Gruenberg, apparently yet another victim, kept reliving and retelling those few seconds when the theft occurred, as though he could not believe it happened.

The tall, pale Londoner, who has been concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic and is now an international concert soloist, is staying at the Pacific Palisades home of Harold Hirsch, an old friend and the maker of the second stolen violin.

Seated on a sofa, Gruenberg told a reporter that he was loading his luggage into Hirsch’s Cadillac.

“I put two suitcases in the trunk.” Gruenberg said, and, as was his custom, went to take the violins inside the car with him.

“The violin never goes in the trunk,” Korshed Gruenberg said as she sat nearby, visibly upset and near tears.

Gruenberg continued: “I turned around, I said to my wife, ‘Darling, where’s the violin?’ I looked right and left, back and forth.

“Then I thought, this is a bad dream.”

Instruments created by Antonio Stradivari, the 17th- and 18th-Century violin maker, are considered unsurpassed in sound quality. Only about 650 still exist and they are often used by the world’s leading players.

“I think the people who took it were not aware of what they took,” Gruenberg said. “I hope they just left it somewhere and somebody will find it, and return it to me.”

Anyone with knowledge of the instruments’ whereabouts should call the Los Angeles Police Department. The Austrian-born violinist added that he “would consider some kind of reward” for their return. The instruments are insured, he said.

Gruenberg said he acquired the Stradivarius from a violin dealer in London in 1974.

For a serious musician, he said, throughout life “you try to find an instrument you bond with. You become like a team.”

“He just played a few strings of that and I said, ‘Eric you don’t give it back,’ ” Korshed Gruenberg said, recalling the day the couple first saw the Stradivarius. “I love it so much. It’s like mine, too. I feel like someone has kidnaped my daughter.”

During their planned three-week vacation, Gruenberg said, he had agreed to do a private recording of a concerto composed by a UCLA professor later this week. Even though he may not have his precious instrument, or his second violin, Gruenberg said he will still meet the engagement.

“Of course, you can play any violin,” he said. “I’ll borrow another violin from Mr. Hirsch.”

But it will make a difference, Gruenberg said.

“The difference would be difficult to explain. It’s like defining quality,” the violinist said, quietly. “What you pay for in a violin is an indefinable depth and color in sound. If you compare it to a mountain lake, the light shines on it like iridescence, and there is depth; endless depths.

“With other instruments in five minutes, they can’t give me anything new.”