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 ?detours' 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.
