Gianandrea Noseda Reveals His Secret Collection of Rare Italian String Instruments

Noseda has been quietly loaning his 17-19th century instruments to members of the National Symphony Orchestra

The 2022 – 2023 season marks Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda's sixth season as Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) in Washington D.C. In June 2022, his contract was extended through the 2026/27 season.

It was recently reported Noseda has been loaning 17th-19th century Italian string instruments from his private collection to the NSO. The musicians playing the valuable instruments did not know Noseda was the lender until this recent announcement.

In his collection, Noseda has seven violins and a viola that, in total, are worth around five million dollars. Noseda's instruments range from a violin made by Francesco Ruggeri in 1686 to one made by Giovanni Francesco Pressenda in 1830. His first purchase in 2011 was a 1725 violin crafted by the Venetian luthier Santo Serafino. He also owns two cellos and intends to bring one to the NSO soon.

After growing up in a middle-class family in Milan and developing an impressive career as a conductor, Noseda began collecting instruments over a decade ago. The idea came to donate the instruments in 2010, when he was guest-conducting Tokyo's NHK Symphony Orchestra and noticed that many of the musicians were playing old Italian instruments. The warmth of the sound struck him so much so, that it inspired him to purchase a violin and lend it to the concertmaster of the Teatro Regio Terino, which he directed at the time.

"I'm not saying that good instruments make the orchestra; the orchestra is made by great musicians. But if you give a good driver a good Ferrari, the driver also will drive faster," Noseda told NPR's Morning Edition host Leila Fadel.

He began to loan more instruments to the Teatro Regio Torino with the assistance of an Italian foundation, and in 2019, he arranged for the same system to be in place for the National Symphony Orchestra.

Noseda's current loan program sees that the principals of each of the orchestra's sections get the right of first refusal, after which other musicians can obtain the instruments on a rotating two-year loan.

Principal second violin Marissa Regni, for example, joined the NSO in 1996 and now plays the violin Noseda first purchased in 2011, the 1725 violin by Serafino.

“Its very touching that he wants to share them with us,” Regni told the Washington Post. “It’s a gift to us, it’s a gift to the instruments, it’s a gift to the audience … People never made these instruments to sit on a shelf, they’re meant to be heard.”