Alexei Lvov and the ‘Tsar Nicholas’ Vuillaume Violin

Of the owners associated with the Tsar Nicholas Vuillaume violin that will be sold on 8th June 2021, Isaac Stern may be the best known to modern audiences. But in the 19th century, Alexei Lvov was just as much of what we might now call an influencer – both in the Imperial Court and salons of his homeland Russia and among the musical celebrities of Europe.

He may be best recognised now as composer of the old Russian national anthem, ‘God Save the Tsar’, whose theme Tchaikovsky used in his 1812 Overture, but by contemporaries, Lvov was also revered as a violinist, and for the reforms he brought to Russian liturgical music and his impact on musical life.

Lvov was born in what is now Tallinn, Estonia, in 1798, the son of Fyodor Lvov, director of the Imperial Court Chapel Choir. He learnt the violin from the age of 7, making his debut at 9 with a Viotti concerto. Having studied at the Institute of Transportation he enlisted in the army in 1818, rising to Major General and serving as personal aide to Tsar Nicholas I. In 1837 he took over as director of the Imperial Court Chapel, his father having died the previous year.

He described himself as a dilettante, but this may be rather coy, as Schumann, who heard him lead Mozart and Mendelssohn quartets, described him as a ‘marvellous and rare performer’ and wrote, ‘If there are other such dilettantes in the Russian capital then many a European artist could learn there rather than teach.’ Glinka wrote in his memoir that ‘the sweetly delicate sounds of Alexei Fedorovich’s entrancing violin became deeply engraved on my memory.’

Following this stay in Leipzig, Lvov went to Paris, where he paid a visit to Vuillaume and commissioned the Tsar Nicholas. By the 1840s the luthier was well established and attracted leading players, renowned not only for his own work but also for his copies. When Paganini gave Vuillaume his Guarneri for repair, the luthier made a copy in only a few days, and legend has it (no doubt promoted by the maker himself) that the violinist mistook it for the original, so accurate was it.

Lvov’s commission included a coat of arms incorporating the words of his own anthem, ‘God Save the Tsar’. Of more than 3,000 instruments that Vuillaume made, very few of them are decorated in this way (including the 1865 ‘Sheremetev’ quartet, of which Ingles & Hayday sold a violin and cello around 2012). The violin is based on Stradivari’s model from around 1708–9 and bears the label Fait à Paris par J.B. Vuillaume pour A. Lvoff l’an 1840. A pencilled 41 in the upper back suggests it might have actually been finished in 1841, though.

Lvov had written his anthem in 1833 at the behest of the Tsar – up to that point, the Tsar’s arrival was ceremoniously greeted with the British anthem, ‘God Save the King’. Lvov wrote the tune in a matter of minutes and when the Tsar heard it, he demanded several more performances. According to Lvov’s account, ‘The Sovereign graciously presented to me a gold snuff-box adorned with diamonds, as a mark of the Imperial pleasure, and also ordered that the words “God protect the Tsar” should be added to the armorial bearings of the Lvov family.’ The words can be seen in the violin’s decoration. Lvov’s piece of music remained the national anthem until the Revolution of 1917.