What's it like - to crush the violin for a million pounds

• How does it feel - to crush the violin for a million pounds of

David Garrett, violin player, 31 years old:

"I started playing the violin at four years. Pretty soon the parents realized that I had a talent. They found me a wonderful teacher, and in seven years I have played at concerts, and at nine he was a soloist of the orchestra. In the eleven years I have signed a label, and I became the youngest performer. For many years I played on another Stradivarius violin - he took them for rent. Once I was offered the violin in 1772, Giovanni Gvadanini, a pupil of Stradivarius. The tool was worth £ 1 million. I took out a loan and paying it for many years. Soon violin became almost an extension of myself.

In December 2007, I made the last payment, and Gvadanini became mine. The last concert of the season I played Mendelssohn. My parents, brother and sister were in the room. In the evening we get together to fly to Germany - to celebrate Christmas.

After the performance I put the violin in its case, threw it over his shoulder and hurried to the parking lot. The rain was falling, and I was still in my shoes live. At one point I slipped, lost his balance and landed on his back, rode on the case with a violin as sledging. I could not get up immediately. My family rushed to check, in the order I, but I did not care at that moment, I feel the pain or not - I only thought about the violin.

Opening the box, I realized that the violin could not survive, but it kind of led me in horror: the body was completely split. I did not cry and did not cry, I just sat there, staring at the violin. Some moments in life is almost impossible to comprehend - so they are surreal. I sat there for ten or fifteen minutes.

I felt as if he had lost a friend. violin repair took seven months and cost about 60 thousand pounds. Fortunately, it was insured. At that time, until it is reduced, I used different violins, which borrowed.

Somewhere in a year I bought another violin - the Stradivarius. I still sometimes play Gvada Nini and I will always be attracted to it. Sometimes I even ask myself the question, not whether it has saved my life: I doubt that I could be so easy to get up and go if on the back I had no case, when I fell. And if I had not broken it, you probably never would have met his true love - a Stradivarius. "