loading . . . four cellos and their humans Some thoughts on
> Cello: A journey through silence to sound
> by Kate Kennedy
> Head of Zeus 2024
Kate Kennedy had her fledgling career as a professional cellist thrown off track by injury, as she explained in this extract from the book, leading her to reflect on what happens when the symbiotic relation between a musician and their instrument is broken by unfortunate events. Now she explores four examples of cellists who were separated from their cellos in more dramatic circumstances, dragging her own cello around Europe to find the places and soundscapes that these earlier cellos and their humans had inhabited.
The instruments in question are, in chronological order:
* The Cristiani Stradivari, and its eponymous owner, Lise Cristiani (1827-1853), who died on an epic concert tour through the Russian Empire, covering remote locations that possibly hadn't seen a cello before. The cello currently resides in a museum in Cremona.
* A Gadigliano cello played by Hungarian composer Pál Hermann, who was murdered in the Holocaust. The cello was saved by relatives after his arrest, but the family sold it later and the author has been unable to find out what happened to it after 1952.
* A Ventapane cello played by Anita Lasker when she was growing up in Breslau. She survived the Holocaust playing a different cello in the women's orchestra at Auschwitz concentration camp. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who turns 100 this year, has also written a memoir about this. The fate of her Ventapane is unknown.
* The Mara Stradivari cello, which ended up floating in the Rio de la Plata when a ferry carrying its owner Amadeo Baldovino and his quartet sank in July 1963. (I don't understand how Baldovino could abandon the cello in search of some float to cling to - surely a cello in a wooden case floats well enough to keep the cellist above water?) It was rebuilt from fragments by W.E. Hill & Sons in London. Since then, it has served Heinrich Schiff and is now played by his alumnus Christian Poltera. It is thus the only one of the four instruments which is known to be still in active service.
The book fits my obsessions with cellos, sense of place, soundscapes really well - the main difference to what I am trying to do with my musical memoir project is that the instruments in my family - and the ones I am currently rescuing / restoring - are in a more modest price range, there are absolutely no Stradivariuses involved in my instrumental adventures (even if some of the labels pretend otherwise). As many examples demonstrate, the exorbitant market value and cultural significance of the famous instruments isn't doing them a good service, in that many of them are now silently sitting in museums or safe vaults, instead of playing music. On the other hand, the shipwrecked instrument certainly wouldn't have been pieced together again if it hadn't been a Stradivarius.
On a related note regarding the relation between insanely famous and common or garden instruments, the author discovered a hilarious entry in the logbooks of W.E. Hill luthiers regarding a visit by Albert Einstein and his violin in October 1933 (note 17 on page 433). The luthiers were quite disparaging about the quality of Einstein's violin and suggested that the only possible reason he might like its sound was that he had gotten used to it. In a blatantly unfair comparison, they showed him the Messiah Stradivarius (now residing in a glass case in the Ashmolean Museum) and let him bow a note on it. Still, Einstein left a happy note in their books, and didn't swap his beloved "Line" for an expensive model. (I still need to scan through the other endnotes in case there are more hidden treasures like this.)
Related to the Cristiani and the Messiah in their museum displays, the author shares an interesting suggestion, namely that the displays should include recorded music from the same or a similar instrument, such that they could resonate with an appropriate sound. I would sign that petition immediately. In a more understanding future, we will regard it as cruelty to keep museum instruments in permanently silent environments.
Useful things I learned from the book include the concept of whakapapa, a Maori term for genealogy including objects and locations, which reminds me of what I'm trying to do with my cello memoir and other family history endeavours. It was interesting to read about historic Breslau, as the parents of our old cellist came from there, but had left following railways job opportunities half a century before Anita was born. Also handy to learn about the traditional luthiers quarter in Paris (rue de Rome, near gare St. Lazare) and the museum in Cremona (where the Cristiani cello now resides), places to visit some time, but preferably travelling without a cello.
I was pleased to see that I already have many of the cello books the author cited, but one blatant gap in my collection is the autobiography of Beatrice Harrison, who famously duetted with a nightingale (or possibly with a nightingale imitator) on live radio in the early days of the BBC. Another is Cellistinnen by Katharina Deserno (2019). Watch this space.
The cover shows the Cristiani cello (the other side of it is on the back). https://proseandpassion.blogspot.com/2025/03/four-cellos-and-their-humans.html
