The first edition of the Casa Stradivari Advanced Training Course in Violin Making was attended by three young luthiers, all graduates of the 'Antonio Stradivari' Violin Making School in Cremona: Francesco Panazza (Italy), Alberto Luca Stella (Italy), and Louis Marin (France).

During the program, each participant crafted a complete string quartet - two violins, one viola, and one cello - following a highly specialized path guided by masters Davide Sora, Marcello Ive, and Primo Pistoni.

The training was enriched by in-depth sessions dedicated to the chemistry of materials, varnishes, and finishing techniques, made possible through the collaboration with CrForma and curated by Claudio Canevari, Curzio Merlo, and Pierre Flavetta, alongside specific sessions on instrument setup conducted by Robert Brewer Young.

Thanks to the collaboration between Fondazione Casa Stradivari and Fondazione Museo del Violino, participants were also able to examine and study closely, under the guidance of former Curator Fausto Cacciatori, the instruments of the Violin Museum Collection and the precious Stradivarian relics, deepening their technical, constructive, and historical knowledge of the great Cremonese tradition.

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A distinctive element of the course was the opportunity to subject the instruments to acoustic tests with internationally renowned performers such as Maxim Vengerov, Kirill Troussov, Ning Feng, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Ilya Gringolts, and the Trio Debussy, as well as the many musicians who visited Casa Stradivari as part of the Artist-in-Residence activities.

This constant relationship between those who build the instruments and those who play them is not an incidental feature, but rather the founding core of Fondazione Casa Stradivari’s artistic project: an ecosystem where luthiers and musicians meet, listen, and collaborate directly, fostering a shared creative process in which the construction of the instrument and its musical interpretation mutually influence each other.