Hello and welcome back! I heard from Michele this week that my cello is nearly complete and that it will be resting and drying during the month of October. When November rolls around, the cello will be set up and played in. She will, I think, be watching to see how the various parts settle in. I visualized this as a cello integration period of sorts. The cello looks in one piece, but it needs to vibrate to really become one. Of course this process will be continuous just as the maturing process for any person or thing is continuous.

I will not be receiving any new pictures of the cello now that it has been varnished. That’s primarily because photographing the total look of the varnished instrument is nearly impossible, especially with a very reflective varnish. You only need to scroll down to see examples of instrument photography which misses the mark. My old cello had a very matted varnish which made photographing it easier, but even then, the true nature of the look was impossible to capture on camera. The lack of photography will make the receipt of the cello very exciting. The sound of the instrument and how it plays would already have been unknown, but now the visual side of things will be a surprise too. All I know is that Michele chose to antique this cello and I am very excited to see what it looks like with varnish.

In the mean time I have been reading Ernst Doring’s book on Guadagnini. It is evidently filled with historical errors, which is especially ironic given that much of the book focuses (overly-so in my opinion) on the regrettable errors of previous biographers. It was interesting in any case to think about what Guadagnini’s life may have been like and marvel at his output not only for its quality, but also for its sheer quantity. Guadagnini’s spent time in Piacenza, Milan, Parma and Turin and had a brief stay in Cremona. It is posited in Doring’s book that the reason Guadagnini may have moved around so much was that he would saturate his own market with instruments and have no one left to sell to, at which point he would pack up and move to a different town. This runs counter to the opinions of previous biographers who supposed that Guadagnini had a bad temper and that he eventually angered in enough people in town that he would have to move periodically to avoid his various enemies. There is no proof of the latter ever being a reason for his migrations.

I enjoyed reading about and seeing the various instruments although it struck me while reading the custodial histories of each instrument that most have been owned by a small handful of wealthy collectors over the centuries. Perhaps we owe these people some gratitude for the caretaking of masterworks from the workshops of Guarneri, Stradivari, Amati etc. however, the wealth and privilege that must be required to own so many violins is exceptional and collecting seems to me a bit like upscale hoarding in the guise of fine taste. But I digress. Instruments of that period are not just tools, they are historical objects and also pieces of art in their own right and it’s no wonder they are desired.

With our return to the MSO concerts and the Overture Hall stage this week, I have had many overwhelming emotions. It has felt quite surreal to be back and to notice how the orchestra has shifted. Some have weathered the pandemic with seeming ease, or perhaps they are better at hiding how this experience has changed them. Some have clearly been changed. For me, it feels very different to be sitting back in my chair on the Overture stage and I admit that while some aspects of the last 18 months have been very positive, as I alluded to in my previous post, there are some ways in which the pandemic and our response to it has changed my perception of the country in which I live and challenged me to justify the value of my contributions via music. Our art has been very challenged and in some cases we have risen to meet the new demands and found creative ways to overcome them. In other ways, this period has dealt a huge blow to the musical culture in which I make my living and exacted a personal toll on some members of this orchestra and many others.

Now that I am on the Overture stage again, hearing my sound in a big space, my anticipation of the new cello has been amplified significantly. I am waiting for new pads for my cello case that will fit the new instrument and that’s about all I can do. I can’t wait to share the cello with you. ETA late November-December?? We shall see