Gabriele Jebran Yakoub is a world-renowned violin craftsman, cellist, jeweler, and creator of over 250 high-quality string instruments, some of which have a unique appearance. In the interview that took place in March 2025 in Berlin, he revealed to his old friend, pianist Semyon Skigin, the secrets of his profession: the author’s recipe for glue and varnish, the peculiarities of wood selection, the process of making and reconstructing strings. He recalled his ancestors, his childhood spent in Damascus and St. Petersburg, his years of study in Cremona, the first cellos and bows. The interlocutors talked about templates and experiments, originals and fakes, superstitions and anecdotes, professional literature, the secrets of Stradivari, and two coexisting Yakoub’s hypostases: the performer and the master.
Skigin, S. B. “Gabriele Jebran Yakoub: ‘In Cremona, I had to not only comprehend the legacy of the past, but also fight it’.” Muzykal’naya akademiya [Music Academy], no. 2, 2025, pp. 198–211, doi:10.34690/471. (In Russ.)
