Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound

Cellist and music critic Kennedy (Oxford Centre for Life-Writing; Dweller in Shadows) focuses this group biography on four cellists: Pál Hermann, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Lise Cristiani, and Amedeo Baldovino. Sleuthing in both official archives and memorabilia, she pieces their stories together. Her book shows that during the Holocaust, Nazis likely killed Hermann (1902–44), a Hungarian Jewish man. Lasker-Wallfisch, age 99, survived the Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camps, mainly due to being a cellist in the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz. Cristiani (1827–53), the first woman professional cello soloist, died penniless, but she had a Stradivarius, considered to be one of the most expensive (and finest) brand of string instruments. That’s what she played when she performed all around Russia and died from cholera while on that tour. Baldovino (1916–98) played on a “Mara” Stradivarius, but his was lost during a shipwreck and later miraculously recovered and repaired. Kennedy weaves her own experiences into the narrative by describing the times she played her own cello at various sites where her subjects performed many years ago.