In the stairwell of this old Cologne building, nothing indicates what awaits the visitor here. Another world opens up behind a normal apartment door. In the hallway logs are stacked up to the ceiling. In the next room, an employee planes the fretboard of a cello. Her colleague is renewing the hair on a violin bow at a workbench. Violins hang tightly together on wires, others stand in display cases. At the very end of this apartment, which has been converted into a workshop, there is a passage to another room with a good dozen double basses: man-sized, pot-bellied objects. They are lined up in rank and file, upright, their thin necks stretched towards the ceiling, it looks as if the wooden cavent men are about to start a parade or perform a ballet. And right in the middle Daniel Kress in a light shirt and bun: a man who, with his slender build and elegant movements, would actually make a good ballet master.
But Kress is a violin maker. However, the 47-year-old master craftsman and his staff rarely build new instruments, they do what most of their colleagues do: they repair and restore all types of stringed instruments, optimize the sound, lend and sell instruments. Kress is considered a specialist for double basses. Jazz musicians and classical orchestral bass players entrust their woofers to him. So it is that he has probably appraised more basses than most luthiers in their entire career. When working on historical basses, Kress always takes notes and records even the smallest details. At some point he noticed contradictions, many of the statements about the year of manufacture and origin of the basses could not be correct. Older, more experienced colleagues usually only shrugged their shoulders when he asked them for advice, says Kress. So he had to take action himself. Kress started his research project, which focused on Mittenwald double bass construction.
The Bavarian town of Mittenwald established itself in the 19th century as a center for the manufacture of stringed instruments. At that time, music literally exploded: composers wrote works for ever larger orchestras, concert halls and opera houses were built on unprecedented dimensions. And the instrument makers tried to satisfy the need for more and more sonority. The basses from Mittenwald met the new requirements perfectly, explains Daniel Kress. Orchestra musicians who had to play Wagner and Bruckner appreciated the particularly large, voluminous instruments. And because they easily coped with the later switch from gut to steel strings, these instruments are still played in almost all German professional orchestras, says Kress. “The Mittenwald violins, on the other hand, only rarely made it onto the philharmonic stage.”
Kress has a magnificent example of such a bass in the workshop. It belongs to one of the best German orchestras and is currently in Cologne for an overhaul. Kress only has to pluck a string lightly, and the deep, dark sound fills the room. “The oral tradition of this orchestra says it was a Kloz bass, an instrument from the Kloz family workshops.” But Kress is skeptical. All of the stylistic features, the curves, the shape of the snail, the type of wood joints and an age determination based on the annual rings of the wood speak in his opinion for another, less well-known Mittenwald workshop. Could it be that the instrument was attributed to the Kloz family to enhance it with this branded fake? This bass would not need anything like that at all, nobody doubts its extraordinary quality.
Incorrect information is not uncommon in violin making, many average violins or cellos have a Stradivarius label on them; There are hundreds of certificates in circulation that are supposed to attest to the alleged authenticity. But over the past few decades, an international network of experts has formed who are able to determine the actual origin and value of the old instruments – and whose judgment is also recognized by insurance companies.
In England and Italy there is also such expertise in the local double bass construction, says Kress. “But in Germany we have a gap here.” And he wants to fill it. “So that we can add a serious determination of age and origin to the great appreciation that these instruments have among the musicians.” This is important in order to come as close as possible to the original condition during a restoration. In addition, Kress wants to use his research to prevent the price of old instruments being driven up with incorrect attributions. It is true that historical double basses do not yet fetch millions like Stradivarius or Guarneri violins. But high five or even six-digit amounts are now common here too.
The production conditions, which changed fundamentally in the 19th century, are to blame for the confusing situation. In the flourishing trade in stringed instruments, large companies like Neuner now existed in Mittenwald
But in this business, which is increasingly characterized by the division of labor and mass production, the construction of double basses seems to have remained an exception. Because basses were not manufactured in such large numbers as violins, violas or cellos, individual craftsmen were probably still responsible for the entire instrument. This could also explain the higher quality of the basses. In the search for these bass builders, Daniel Kress proceeds like a forensic profiler. He analyzes stylistic peculiarities – and systematizes them in a database. Sometimes, when he has to open a bass for repairs, he even finds a name – such as with Johann Ferdinand Seiz, who liked to leave his signature in pencil on the inside of the bass, not visible from the outside. The instruments were sold under other names.
The fact that violin maker Daniel Kress became a specialist in Mittenwald basses is almost a biographical inevitability. Kress, who was born in Frankfurt and learned to play the violin there, went to the violin making school in Mittenwald at the age of 17. Because the orchestra at this school needed a bass player, he took double bass lessons. He spent his first journeyman years at the Pöllmann company in Mittenwald. And what is being built there? Right: double basses.
