CELLO

Strikingly original The Times Absorbing Wall Street Journal Just as a cello s voice is divided across four strings each with its own colour and character this is a journey in four parts in search of four players and their instruments In Cello Kate Kennedy weaves together the lives of four remarkable cellists who suffered various forms of persecution injury and misfortune The Hungarian Jewish cellist and composer Pál Hermann managed to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo for much of the Second World War but was eventually captured and murdered Lise Cristiani the first female professional cello soloist undertook an epic and ultimately fatal concert tour of Siberia in the 1850s taking with her one of the world s greatest Stradivari cellos Anita Lasker Wallfisch was incarcerated in both Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen camps only surviving because she was the cellist in the Auschwitz Birkenau women s orchestra Amedeo Baldovino of the Trieste Piano Trio was forced to jump from a burning ship with his Mara Stradivari losing the cello and nearly losing his own life when the boat was shipwrecked off Buenos Aires Counterpointing the themes raised by these extraordinary stories are a sequence of interludes that draw together the author s reflections on