Music’s hidden realm

There’s a deferential hush surrounding Melbourne-based master violin-maker Rainer Beilharz as he carefully removes the bottom end block, bridge, strings and tailpiece of a 1717 Stradivarius violin. He then fills the still-sealed body of the instrument with rice, gently swirls it around and tips it out, along with any 300-year-old specks of dust. Insured for $12 million – but in reality, priceless – this is one of only about 600 stringed instruments surviving today that bears the famed Stradivarius name. 

In what will be a world-first, it’s here today to be photographed – from inside – by Charles Brooks, a Melbourne-based photographer who specialises in capturing images of the interiors of musical instruments. Charles is the only person in the world who does this sort of highly technical specialist photography, which uses medical lenses. His images have been reproduced millions of times, and a Strad has been on his wish list for a while.

New Zealand-born Charles was himself an elite musician, having played during a 15-year career as the principal cellist with orchestras in China, Taiwan, Chile and Brazil. But he began to develop his unique style of photography when live music shut down worldwide during COVID. He recalled a famous series of photographs, from 20 years earlier, of the interiors of instruments from the Berlin Philharmonic, taken while they were being repaired.

“It was a beautiful and famous series, but you could tell these were instruments in the process of being heavily repaired, and certain parts were missing,” Charles says, explaining that he wondered what the view might look like taken from inside intact instruments. “And I thought, I’d love to do this with a Stradivarius, with a fine instrument. But you don’t want to take the top off a Strad unless it’s absolutely necessary. I mean, that might happen a couple of times in a century at most.” 

Charles had been a keen photographer since his high-school days and had continued to dabble with that passion during his years travelling the world as a performer. Initially his subjects were landscapes and night skies, then portraits of people. But after one protracted pandemic lockdown, he began exploring ways of photographing inside musical instruments.

“I went down this rabbit hole at first, looking at commercially available probe lenses for photographers,” Charles says. “They were too big, so I got a heat gun and melted off the casing of one, and that got me inside cellos. But I still couldn’t get into a violin. Eventually, I teamed up with [a medical device maker] who lent me a couple of endoscopes. It took me about a year to figure out how to use them in a way that I could get these high-resolution photos.”

Initially, the instruments Charles photographed were from trusting friends, and the first image he had any success with was of a cello made in 1780. It was in a state of disrepair and being restored by a mate who was a luthier – a craftsman who makes and repairs stringed instruments.

“I started a website and posted that image, thinking I might sell five or six prints, and I published it on Reddit,” Charles recalls. “Within a couple of days there were thousands of people looking, and it was crazy.”

From that shoot he produced a series of images that, Charles estimates, were ultimately reproduced some 20 million times across newspapers and magazines, making it one of the most published art photo series ever. German newspaper Die Zeit ran one of Charles’s photos and an accompanying story weekly for six weeks. It was, he estimated, editorial coverage worth the equivalent of millions of dollars’ worth of advertising. So, he made this very niche form of photography his career and hasn’t looked back.

“I never expected it to be this popular, and now I keep finding new instruments. Everything’s interesting. Everything’s exciting. It’s always something new – I very rarely find an instrument that’s boring,” he says.

“It’s an important part of the documentation that’s missing for most instruments,” Rainer says. He adds, however, that, as a luthier, the views don’t tell him much that he isn’t already aware of, because most valuable instruments can now be investigated using CT scans and other modern technologies.

“Until about 40 years ago, there wasn’t much public information about any old violins. That was held in certain elite violin shops,” he continues. “Now there has been a complete explosion of information out there – varnish analysis and tonal analysis, all these sorts of things. But this [Charles’s work] is more visual – it’s such a beautiful thing.”

To date, Charles says, one of the most surprising instruments he’s shot has been a yidaki – a didgeridoo. “I was expecting to see a rustic instrument that had been chiselled out. But instead, I’m presented with this extraordinary organic structure, because, of course, they’re [deliberately encouraged to be] eaten out by termites,” Charles says.

“Inside, it feels like a cave, and then you’ve got this red ochre running down from the wax in the mouthpiece that kind of bleeds into the instrument. You end up with a black-and-red tunnel that terminates with bright lights, and it looks like a nebula – like it’s out of the world of astrophotography, which is another big passion of mine.” 

Then there are the images he has taken from inside a bassoon owned by early 20th-century global operatic superstar Dame Nellie Melba – historically fascinating because of its influence on all classical music in this country.

“She didn’t play it, but she brought a pair of them over to Australia when she started out,” Charles says. He explains that, back then, Aussie orchestras were essentially concert bands that played at a pitch that was higher than what Nellie and most other opera singers  were comfortable with.

“That meant she couldn’t sing opera in Australia, because the instruments were all tuned too high. So, she pushed in the early 1900s to standardise Australian orchestras with the rest of the world by bringing these instruments over from Europe. This is one of them, and it worked.”

The moment arrives

So, a strad has been on Charles’s bucket list since he began this newfound specialist career. And now there’s one here, in the protective company of Daniel Dodds, artistic director of Festival Strings Lucerne, in Switzerland, and one of Australia’s most acclaimed orchestral violinists. Dan is back home temporarily with the loaned Strad for a series of concerts including two with the Australian World Orchestra. The orchestra is occasionally pulled together, like an all-star sports team, from Australia’s most elite musicians, many of whom return from positions in overseas orchestras to play for a limited concert series. 

Rainer has also brought along one of his modern instruments, made in 2024, to be photographed. And local violinist Wilma Smith, who has performed all over the world and now plays with the Flinders Quartet, has also brought along her own 1761 Guadagnini – not quite as famed as a Strad, but almost as feted.

“I’ve been very lucky to play this violin for 40 years now and I know its history directly back to 1919,” says Wilma, who will also perform with her Guadagnini at the Australian World Orchestra series. “It was bought from Charles Beare’s London violin shop by a man called John Lawson, for £400. And I’ve got the original receipt, so it’s certified as a genuine Guadagnini. 

“John Lawson was a well-known violinist in Manchester. His son Eric, who also played, inherited this violin and came to New Zealand with his wife for a job as deputy leader of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.” Wilma, who was then living in Boston, met Eric when he was about 80 and played the Guadagnini briefly. Months later, Eric decided he’d like Wilma to be the next owner of the violin and offered it to her for a fraction of its market value at the time. When Wilma returned to New Zealand to found the New Zealand String Quartet, she visited Eric regularly and they played duets until his death. Of course, she played the Guadagnini at his funeral.

On the shoot, it takes at least two hours of work by Charles for each instrument after it’s been gently cleaned and minimally prepared. Then there’s many more hours in post-production using tech Charles has sourced from Ukraine to stitch together multiple images taken at different resolutions.

“I don’t think I’d be able to do this without the patience I picked up from playing cello and doing all that practice,” Charles says. “This is very slow, very repetitive, methodical stuff. It feels like I’m at home practising my scales. It’s kind of meditative. There are definitely things I’ve adapted from other forms of photography, but there are things from my years playing the cello that help me take these photos.”

What do you see inside these instruments? “Sometimes you see the chisel marks of the original maker, especially in places like the corner blocks. And so, you feel a closer connection to the luthier from the inside than the outside, which is polished to perfection – which is wonderful. But inside, you see the history. You see the repairs,” Charles says. 

So far, Charles says, every instrument has been different once he gets to see inside them, and none has ever disappointed. “I once photographed a saxophone that was just over 100 years old, and the inside of it was this incredible place where the brass had gone green – not because it wasn’t clean, but [because] it was just oxidised from playing. And what I really loved is that the oxidisation was from thousands of hours of musicians’ breath going through that instrument. Every practice session, every concert had fused and changed this instrument at a molecular level, and that was baked into its history. 

“It’s the same when we go into these instruments,” Charles continues, pointing to the Strad and the other violins being photographed today. “These are so meticulously kept on the outside. Every repair is hidden, and everything is polished to perfection. And there are good reasons for that, but you also feel like you kind of lose the history. But when you see it inside, you’re seeing the hand marks of the original maker. You’re seeing repairs and changes from over the centuries. You’re seeing, in Wilma’s case, mysterious marks. To me, it’s not just about observation. It’s about legacy. And I find that very exciting.”

The Australian World Orchestra will perform concerts at Melbourne Arts Centre on 3 September and the Sydney Opera House on 4 September.