A violin made of wood treated with a fungus just bested the real McCoy — a Stradivarius crafted by the great master himself in 1711 — in a sound test in front of 180 people. The fungi-infested violins were created by Francis Schwarze of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research and the Swiss violin maker Michael Rhonheimer. In the test, which took place at a conference on forest husbandry in Germany (called “Osnabrücker Baumpflegetagen"), British violinist Matthew Trusler played five different instruments behind a curtain to keep the audience blinded. Trusler played his own strad (worth $2...