Nguyen Xuan Huy at a music contest held in Poland in 1985.

VietNamNet Bridge – A violinist who studied for years at Russia’s Tchaikovsky Music Conservatory returned home to become a violin maker. Violins made by this man are praised by violinists as artworks for their wood materials and tones.

One who plays the violin is an artist and one who makes a violin is a craftsman, but in some respects, this violin maker named Nguyen Xuan Huy can be called an artist.

Curriculum vitae

Huy was born in Hanoi in 1972 in a family of artists. His father is a violinist who studied at the Shanghai Music Conservatory in China and his mother is a singer.

Huy’s father taught him how to hold a violin when he was eight years old. One year later, Huy entered the Hanoi Music Conservatory to study playing violin. After that he went to Russia to study at the Gnhexinsky and Tchaikovsky Music Conservatories for over 10 years.

Huy’s youth was a memorable period of time with music. In 1985, he participated in a music contest for young talents held in Venhepsky, Poland. The event attracted 300 music players from all over the world and Huy came in 16^th. During his time In Russia, Huy went all over the world to perform. His five passports are full of visa stamps.

In 1991, the former USSR collapsed. Huy no longer had a scholarship so he had to earn his living by playing violin. “At that time I played in the 21^st Century Orchestra, which was funded by Diana. Apart from playing music, I taught martial arts as well,” he said.

Returning to Hanoi to make violins

Saying goodbye to the Tchaikovsky Music Conservatory and overseas performances, Huy returned to Hanoi at the age of 28.

Nguyen Xuan Huy at present.

Difficulties in life created sudden branching roads in the life of the music talent. He worked at the Vietnam Music-Dance-Drama Theatre for around six or seven months and then the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra for another period of time. Finally, he said goodbye to both, the best places for artists who play classical music like Huy in Vietnam. The reason was that there was little chance for the artist, who had studied for many years, to perform.

This was a very difficult decision for Huy. No longer playing the violin on stage, he still couldn’t leave the violin. He became a violin maker.

With deep knowledge of music and techniques in making violins and skilful hands, Huy makes violins in a unique way. Vietnamese violinists all know Huy, a strange violin-making artist.

This profession didn’t come to Huy by chance. When he studied in Russia, anytime he went abroad to perform, he always reserved time to visit violin-making enterprises. This is his passion, which has combined with his skillfulness to make him a reputed violin maker nowadays.

It is strange that Huy mainly makes violins and adjusts the tones of them by using a knife while other violin makers need many modern tools.

Some people have brought their expensive violins to Huy’s house for repair and they were unhappy seeing Huy whittle their violins, but then they were very satisfied with the new tones of their musical instruments.

“Normally a violin with errors must be disemboweled to seek the part of errors but it is more important to listen to its tone to find out the wrong tone and repair the error without having to disembowel it,” he said.

It takes a lot of labour if the violin is disemboweled. He who can find the part with the error and make a ‘small operation’ can repair the instrument quickly without any harm. This requires skilful hands and good ears which can feel the standard tone of the violin. Huy has both.

Normally it takes Huy more than two years to make a violin by hand but once he made a violin in 14 days, working 18 hours a day.

“I make violins for my passion,” he said. Huy has repaired many violins but made just several violins because making a violin is a devotion of time and labour as well as brain and sentiment. That’s why the price of such a violin is several thousand US dollars while a violin made by industrial method is around VND1 million ($80-90).

So far Huy has ‘whittled’ 15 violins and five of them are really artworks. Of the five violins, two are owned by the Paris Music Conservatory, one by the Berlin Music Conservatory, one by the Chief of the String-musical Instrument Faculty at the Hanoi Conservatory and the last by Professor Ta Bon in HCM City.

Huy has had to do many jobs to earn his living but he can’t give up violins. For him, happiness is the world of sound from his violins. Nobody can make light of his violins and explaining this, he simply said: “I understand the violin in each wood-fibre.”

Once while he was making a violin, the chisel hurt his hand and caused some of his fingers to lose their feeling. For a normal violin player, their music career would have come to an end because they couldn’t feel the shaking of their fingers, but Nguyen Xuan Huy can make you cry when he plays music.

“I adjust the tone by feeling sound through my ears,” he said.

(Source: Tien Phong)