Giorgi Licovski |
Veles (North Macedonia) (EFE).- Before starting to make violins, Svetozar Bogdanovski had been a painter all his life and never considered changing his brushes for horsehair bows, until the discovery of his son’s talent little boy, Kostadin, with this instrument led him to learn how to make them.
What started out as a hobby and a way of procuring a violin for his two young children – his youngest daughter, Frosina, soon wanted to learn to play it too – would become over the years an obsessive search for the perfect sound.
“Every time I moved further away from painting and delved deeper into the secrets of violin making and the search for sound,” Bogdanovski explains to EFE.
“The sound became an obsession. What used to be painting on canvas became a search for the color of sound: the volume and force of sound became my daily occupation”.
Nurturing that obsession required an insatiable determination to learn the luthier’s trade and embrace the vast knowledge and varied techniques necessary to produce an instrument of the highest quality.
“For many it was illogical, but I didn’t think much about what I was getting myself into. I was determined to succeed,” she states.
Commitment to the trade
Making violins is “very complex, delicate and requires extensive knowledge”, as well as specific tools and materials, explains Bogdanovski, who recalls that when he began his career as a master violinist, “there was no Internet” or video-manuals on YouTube, and the bibliography that he had “was very poor”.
One of the most important materials is “highly acoustic” wood, such as spruce and maple, which, luckily for Bogdanovski, are abundant in the mountains of Bosnia-Herzegovina, so he would go into the forests to pick the trees himself. , some 400 or 500 years old.
But he soon realized that traveling to choose the best raw materials was not enough to achieve the perfect sound.
“You have to immerse yourself in your own profession, the construction of the instrument, the construction of the sound, harmonizing everything that makes the instrument reproduce the best sound,” he says.
The last crucial element for the violin to sing is the bow, which Bogdanovski calls a “special chapter apart” in the painstaking process of making a violin.
“It requires knowledge of the highest technology, resins, essential oils and balms (…) You have to get them, collect them, study their character to be able to manufacture a bow that is elastic, resistant and durable”, he explains.
For this work he has had the support of his wife Tanja Biseva, who is a professional violinist and also an artist.
eternal search
As the quality of his work improved and his sons became master violinists playing their father’s handmade instruments, word spread among prominent musicians, who traveled far and wide to his workshop to repair their own violins or buy a Bogdanovski.
“A good word travels a long way,” says the luthier, who has twice won the Violin Society of America (VSA) award in the United States.
“Today my violins are compared to those of the best classical masters of the Italian classical era. It is a great pleasure to have reached such a high level”, says Bogdanovski, who believes that much of his success is due to his “artistic intuition”, unlike other luthiers who prefer a more technical approach.
“I trust my inner instinct, my intuition and my feel,” says Bogdanovski, who has been searching for the perfect sound for more than 30 years.
“Where is the end of this search for the perfect shade? I think there is no end because the tone is fluid, like the eternal search for the philosopher’s stone in the alchemists’ workshops”, he affirms.