Henriette Lersch in Vienna
What first attracted me to violin making, was the idea of making wood sound, and of combining crafts with music — what attracts me now is developing sound as well, for and as together with the player — Vienna is a great city for that, as we have ten professional orchestras, three fully operating opera houses, two big concert buildings, and a lot of smaller ensembles and venues and many well trained musicians who are precise in and aware of what they want from an instrument.
Restauration is another attraction for me as a luthier — every bigger damage is a new and unique challenge. At the moment I'm working of one of my biggest and most challenging restaurations, a Cellotop that I got in several pieces in a cardboard box. 18 of 32 cracks where glued with superglue, and some splinters where missing. I reopened and cleaned all the cracks, put the top back together piece by piece and filled up the holes, and reshaped the top, at the moment I’m reinforcing and I’m looking forward to the touch-up.
During my training years, restaurations sometimes haunted me in my dreams. During a season of patching a worm-eaten viola back, I dreamed, that, after I had finished the back and my boss was about to sell the instrument, he confronted me, saying: “Henriette, what did you use for those patches?! All the patches you made turned into sponge cake as soon as I showed the instrument!” Though I'm a big fan of cake (of which there is abundant in Vienna) I never managed to turn wood into cake in real life yet…
A musician, who played one of my baroque violins, introduced me to Gamut strings. Set up with a set of equal-tension strings the instrument started to get much more depth and brilliance. So I got curious about Dan Larson's work. Meeting Dan at the Boston Early Music festival 2013 was informative and inspiring, I’m impressed with his knowledge about old strings and his zeal to put his ideas into material. I’m glad to have gained access to a wider spectrum of sound using Gamut strings.
Henriette Lersch
Geigenbaumeisterin
Marxergasse 11/2
1030 Wien
+43 1 9710285
henriette.lersch@chello.at