In the Prelude of Kate Kennedy’s new book Cello – A Journey Through Silence to Sound, she writes, “And so began a journey across Europe, a journey in and out of silence and music to uncover the stories of cellists and their instruments.” Kate Kennedy is an Associate Professor of music and English at Oxford University, frequent presenter of BBC broadcasts, writer/lecturer on 20th century literature and director of Oxford’s Centre for the Study of Women Composers. An aspiring cellist, her career was derailed by severe arm tendonitis, but a bonding with the instrument remains a motivating aspect of her new book Cello. (Pegasus Books, 2024). It is a story within a story about four famously, mostly unknown cellists from mid-nineteenth century to present who concertized, performed or perished in a Nazi concentration camp.
The book is amazingly well-researched and offers photographs and factual, heartfelt encounters that trace Kennedy with her companion cello from England to places like Berlin, Paris, Cremona, Trieste and Wroclaw to recreate the musical and social lives of four cellists: Lise Cristiani (1827-1853), Pál Hermann (1902-1944), Amedeo Baldovino (1916-1998) and ninety-nine year old Anita Lasker-Wallfisch (1925-). Kennedy’s intent is to meld with these personalities in a rather symbiotic way and relive how they might have reacted to all things exhilarating and tragic, which includes a relationship to their instruments and provenance of the significant other: Cristiani’s 1700 Stradivarius she called Monseigneur Stradivarius, Baldovino’s 1711 Stradivarius ex-Mara (the instrument barely survived a shipwreck incident), Hermann’s Gagliano and Lasker-Wallfisch’s Ventapane.
In her search for musical ghosts, a sense of mysticism envelopes the four protagonists, the instruments they used and those who made them, such as Stradivari (63 of his cellos remain), as reflected in the chapter, From Paris to Cremona. Kennedy’s approach evokes a kind of Agatha Christie mystery with a musical twist that draws readers into her assertion, “To play a historic instrument is to hold hands across the past with those who have gone before.” In preparing an article on 19th century fortepianos, I was allowed to play a few once owned or performed on by Mozart, Beethoven and Clara Schumann at museums in Vienna – which provides food for thought about the interpretation of keyboard works written by composers of that era.
Keyboard instruments have evolved from dainty fortepianos to 1,000 pound grands. But, there seems to be another element, too which is a special kinship associated with string players and their instruments, particularly if made by Old Italian luthiers that only require restoration not redesign. In that regard, Kennedy mentions a quote from Christian Poltéra who plays the Mara Stradivarius: “A great Stradivari is not for every player. It isn’t a vehicle for your own voice, it has its own discrete identity. You have to fit your ideas around it – you are showcasing it, you are its carer, presenting it to the public for it to sing. There are two voices duetting on stage – yours and your Stradivari.”
After finishing the read, I thought that it’s about time these great musicians are given some up close and personal attention, simply because they were and are important personalities in the world of cellotopia and chamber music. Kennedy’s lengthy descriptions of her encounters are peppered with fascinating and melancholy snippets that include Hermann, whose celebrated European career as performer and composer was extinguished by Nazi gobbling of people and countries, of which she visits concentration camps where he was sent; Cristiani, a trailblazing female cellist who used an endpin, performed throughout Europe and Siberia and was apparently revered as much for looks as playing – of which some of her concert reviews are included. Cristiani’s career was cut short at age twenty-six, but her legendary Stradivarius is now housed in Museo del Violino of Cremona, Italy.
Kennedy’s riveting accounts highlight a fateful concert tour and near drowning of the Trieste Piano Trio with Baldovino and Stradivarius on a sailing from Montevideo to Buenos Aires. And there is compelling conversations with and historical insight about Lasker-Wallfisch, mother of Raphael Wallfisch but also an artist in her own right – having survived a stint in the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz conducted by Alma Rosé (daughter of Arnold Rosé) to become a guiding force of London’s musical scene and co-founder of the English Chamber Orchestra.
Kennedy ends the book’s adventures with a comment that connects a belief shared by her protagonists vis-à-vis their instruments and also herself. “As Pál Hermann’s Gagliano tells us, wherever it is, whoever is playing it now: Ego sum Anima Musicae. I am the soul of music.”