Since there has been some interest in the late Erica Morini on the list,
I thought I would write what little I remember of an article that appeared
in the Washington Post perhaps a year after she died.  I may still have
the article, if I could lay my hands on it.  Some of this account comes
from the impression the article left on me, not necessarily on facts that
it cited.

Ms. Morini's withdraw from the concert stage was not a voluntary
retirement.  She just stopped receiving invitations to perform.  She
believed she faced a large measure of sex-discrimination throughout her
career, and those feelings left a considerable legacy of bitterness.  Some
of the sweet sound she produced could be attributed to her instrument: the
famed Davidoff Strad (at least I think that's its name).  It was one of the
true elites produced by the master.

Ms. Morini lived a retirement of spendid isolation in New York City,
never contributing anything of her life experience to the world of music,
or any other world for that matter.  Her reputation for stinginess was
right up there with that of Scrooge.  One thing in life she did value was
her violin, which she had not played for decades by the time she died in
her early nineties.  As her death approached, she became quite fearful that
someone would try to steal the instrument.  There were very few people who
had access to her apartment.  Sure enough, when she died, the violin had
been switched with a garden variety instrument, and it was established that
the switch had occurred in the days immediately preceeding her death.

At the time the Post article was written, there had been no arrests
made concerning the theft of the instrument, although there was one good
candidate.  Does anyone know of futher developments.  By the way, a young
fiddler friend of mine noted that if a violin is not played for a period
of a few years, it can take a decade of patient coaxing to bring it back
to life.

Larry Sherwood