“It was spooky and I died 10,000 deaths,” says musician Carolin Widmann, recalling a flight from Helsinki to Leipzig with a shudder.
At the airport in the Finnish capital, on reaching the Lufthansa check-in counter, she was told she could not take her 244-year-old violin, including its case and bows, onto the plane as hand luggage.
So she unpacked the valuable instrument, made by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini in 1782, and wound up cradling it on her lap like a baby during the whole flight.
The 49-year-old professor of violin at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University of Music and Theatre in Leipzig, Germany, was constantly afraid that her precious instrument would be damaged and did not even dare to go to the toilet.
As meals were served, she broke out into a sweat. After brief deliberation, she hid her instrument under her jumper, fearful at what might happen if tomato juice, red wine or mashed potatoes were to splash onto the violin or if there was
turbulence during the flight.
The violin does not belong to her but is provided by a London foundation.