If Natalie Cumming's violin could speak, what a story it would tell.
Over the next 40 minutes, we'll be hearing about its extraordinary journey from Russia to England, witnessing some of the most shocking events of the 20th century and saving the lives of an entire family along the way.
Hello, I'm Jo Fidgeon.
Welcome to outlook.
Natalie, who's 84 now, is the granddaughter of the fiddle's first owner, Abraham Levinsky, tutor to the children of Russia's last tsar, Nicholas ii.
His pupils weren't bad, but certainly not as talented as his own three children, especially Rosa.
She was something special.
Anyway, when the Bolsheviks started moving on st Petersburg in 1917, life became very precarious for Abraham and his family.
The revolutionaries were targeting Jews and anyone associated with the Tsar.
Abraham was visiting his brother Nathan, a tailor, one night when bad news arrived.
Apparently this particular colonel from the palace came and warned my grandfather that he must leave Russia that night because the Tsar had been arrested and his son had been arrested, and that there would bound to be repercussions on anyone like my grandfather, who'd been employed by the Tsar in any way.
He gave my grandfather some money.
I've no idea how much, of course, Grandfather would have had some of his own.
Uncle Nathan had none.
And so that's why they left almost immediately, as soon as they could get their hand cart that they managed to get and loaded.
And when you say they left.
So this was your grandfather, Abraham, his brother Nathan, their wives and their five children.
And this hand cart, I mean.
So they set off, they pack up their belongings in a handcart, no horse.
So the men are going to have to pull this cart.