NewsArticle

Italian immigrant
restores lost sounds

By DON FABER
NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Peter A. Tatar contributes to the art of the world.
Tatar restores the voices of instruments on which time and use have taken their toll.

At one point in his life, Tatar wanted to play cello in an orchestra. But a friend urged him to continue working in his father's shop, caring for and restoring the stringed instruments and bows of many world-famous musicians. And some not so famous. "I've helped a lot of very honest, poor starving musicians," says Tatar.

Tatar's father, Pietro, was a master violin maker who headed the International Violin Making School of Cremona, Italy, near Milan, for 15 years. Peter emigrated to the United States in 1959 as a 10-year-old boy.
"America back then was viewed as the land of opportunity," says Tatar. "So my dad, who wanted to be on his won, took his family, tools and wood to the U.S."

For 15 years, the Tatar family ran the "Cremona Violin Shop" across the street from Carnegie Hall in New York City. Peter Tatar learned the craft of violin making and restoration under his father's expert tutelage.
Among the shop's customers Tatar remembers Elmar Oliveira, the Portuguese-American violinist and gold medal winner of the Tchaikovsky competition in 1975.
"I worked on his instrument," Tatar says proudly.

Tatar attended the High School of Performing Arts in New York, where he majored in cello. He was a pupil of Nathan Stutch, assistant principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic, then conducted by Leonard Bernstein.
Stutch was a "strict technician and a taskmaster," Tatar recalls. "He always made me do scales first, and only then thirds, double stops and different bowings."

Tatar spent a year at the New York College of Music, since merged with New York University, still studying under Stutch. One of Tatar's classmates was Pincas Zukerman, who has gone on to world fame as a violist, violinist and conductor.

Tatar went on to study cello at the Giueseppe Verdi conservatory in Milan for a year...Back in New York...He went back to work with his father, "preparing bows, polishing accessories and gluing seams."...

"I get involved with the owner of the instrument," says Tatar, "to improve its sound - that's what every musician wants. And that's something I can do."