Orchestra may sell prized instruments

The financially struggling New Jersey Symphony Orchestra is selling its prized collection of “Golden Age” string instruments, four years after acquiring them for $17 million from a benefactor who wound up in jail.

The NJSO had hoped the 30 violins, violas and cellos made by such Italian makers as Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu would place it among the world’s top orchestras. But orchestra officials said the debt from the 2003 purchase hasn’t been relieved by ticket sales or donations.

With demand for such instruments high, the orchestra expects to make a profit that would provide financial security, orchestra President Andre Gremillet said in Friday’s editions of the Star-Ledger of Newark.

The orchestra bought the instruments from philanthropist Herbert Axelrod, who later served a 16-month federal sentence after pleading guilty in an unrelated tax-fraud case.