Overview

Cello is a group biography that weaves together four narratives of cellists who suffered various forms of persecution, injury, and misfortune. The stories are those of the forgotten Jewish cellist Pal Hermann, who is likely to have been murdered by the Nazis in Lithuania during the Holocaust; Lise Cristiani, another forgotten performer, who is considered to be the first female professional cello soloist and who embarked on an epic concert tour of Siberia in the 1850s taking with her a Stradivarius cello that can be seen to this day in a museum in Cremona in northern Italy; Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who played in the orchestra at Auschwitz and survived spells in both that camp and in Bergen-Belsen; and Amedeo Baldovino of the Trieste piano trio, whose ‘Mara’ Stradivarius was lost in a shipwreck in the River Plate between Buenos Aires and Uruguay but later recovered from the water and repaired. Interwoven with their remarkable and often moving stories are a series of interludes that offer a foil to the group biographies. These examine the themes explored in the narratives from different perspectives, drawing together essay-like musings, historical research, personal experience, and the author’s many interviews and encounters with contemporary cellists.

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9781803287034

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Reviews

This wonderful book is a love-letter to cellos and cellists, a gripping quest across Europe for lost and sometimes miraculously re-found instruments, a startling plunge into the dark histories of our times, a meditation and improvisation on music and musicians, and a moving personal story of a cellist who has rediscovered her own gift for playing and with it the central meaning of her life. * Hermione Lee * Kate Kennedy’s quest across seas and continents, following the lives of four great cellists, is a rare musical adventure. Brimming with life, comic, thoughtful, and at times heartbreaking, Cello explores the bond between players and their instruments and its enduring power. * Jenny Uglow * Kate Kennedy has followed her cello heart, and it has led her on a fascinating and unusual path. An excellently researched, thoroughly absorbing account of a personal voyage of musical discovery. * Steven Isserlis * This is a beautiful, richly fascinating book – a love song to the cello which, as if a character, lives within the lives of those musicians who play it. * Stephen Hough * A wonderfully evocative journey of exploration and contemplation in the company of four remarkable cellists and their equally remarkable instruments. * Robin Lustig * Kate Kennedy’s fascinating and deeply moving book about the cello weaves a lifetime’s passion for the instrument as a performer with her skills as a historian. This absorbing exploration of remarkable instruments and their players through death camps, shipwrecks, and on into the cellos of the future is an embodiment of the deep companionship between musician and instrument. I was fascinated by insights which only a professional cellist could know and by entirely unexpected aspects of the instrument’s physicality. Above all, Kennedy’s book is a deeply humane tribute to the partnership between composer, musician and instrument, ‘the soul of music’ and is a huge achievement. * Gwyneth Lewis * Fascinating -- Ivan Hewett * The Telegraph * Strikingly original -- Kathryn Hughes * The Times * Cello sings richly … The human leads are compelling and carefully drawn out by Kennedy's new research. But their instruments are almost more so ... fascinating -- Alexandra Coghlan * The Spectator *

This wonderful book is a love-letter to cellos and cellists, a gripping quest across Europe for lost and sometimes miraculously re-found instruments, a startling plunge into the dark histories of our times, a meditation and improvisation on music and musicians, and a moving personal story of a cellist who has rediscovered her own gift for playing and with it the central meaning of her life. * Hermione Lee * Kate Kennedy’s quest across seas and continents, following the lives of four great cellists, is a rare musical adventure. Brimming with life, comic, thoughtful, and at times heartbreaking, Cello explores the bond between players and their instruments and its enduring power. * Jenny Uglow * Kate Kennedy has followed her cello heart, and it has led her on a fascinating and unusual path. An excellently researched, thoroughly absorbing account of a personal voyage of musical discovery. * Steven Isserlis * This is a beautiful, richly fascinating book – a love song to the cello which, as if a character, lives within the lives of those musicians who play it. * Stephen Hough * A wonderfully evocative journey of exploration and contemplation in the company of four remarkable cellists and their equally remarkable instruments. * Robin Lustig * Kate Kennedy’s fascinating and deeply moving book about the cello weaves a lifetime’s passion for the instrument as a performer with her skills as a historian. This absorbing exploration of remarkable instruments and their players through death camps, shipwrecks, and on into the cellos of the future is an embodiment of the deep companionship between musician and instrument. I was fascinated by insights which only a professional cellist could know and by entirely unexpected aspects of the instrument’s physicality. Above all, Kennedy’s book is a deeply humane tribute to the partnership between composer, musician and instrument, ‘the soul of music’ and is a huge achievement. * Gwyneth Lewis *

This wonderful book is a love-letter to cellos and cellists, a gripping quest across Europe for lost and sometimes miraculously re-found instruments, a startling plunge into the dark histories of our times, a meditation and improvisation on music and musicians, and a moving personal story of a cellist who has rediscovered her own gift for playing and with it the central meaning of her life. * Hermione Lee *

Author Information

Kate Kennedy is one of the foremost critics of twentieth century music of her generation. Frequently heard on Radio 3 since 2009, she has a busy schedule broadcasting and lecturing in concert halls and festivals throughout the UK on British composers. She has published widely on twentieth century culture and music, including The Silent Morning: Culture and the Armistice, 1918, Literary Britten, and Dweller in Shadows: A Life of Ivor Gurney (selected by the Royal Philharmonic Society as the best writing on music in 2021). She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, Co-Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-writing, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Women Composers.

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