The Essay: Five Cellos - Lost and Found

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Five Cellos: Lost and Found: The Bee Cello

The Bee Cello

Five Cellos: Lost and Found

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Five Cellos: Lost and Found, The Bee Cello

The story of an abandoned cello that a physicist has filled with 400,000 bees.

A scientist from Nottingham has filled an abandoned cello with 400,000 bees and plays them Bach. They love their home, and their behaviour has revealed new areas for cello design.

Writer and musician Kate Kennedy takes a personal look at five lost cellos, and what they can tell us of those who played and loved them and how our identities are shaped by the physical, social and psychological impacts of performance

An abandoned cello rescued from a skip stands alone under a pergola in an orchard of a stately home on the outskirts of Nottingham. In an eccentric experiment, created by one of the world experts in honeybees, apiarist and physicist Prof. Martin Benscik has donated the instrument to 400,000 bees who now live very happily inside the cello. Kate Kennedy reflects on how the colony has 'improved' the cello's design by gluing wax onto specific resonant parts whilst the intelligent bees’ buzzing, duets with the cello as the wind whistles through its strings in its exposed location. This is the story of sharing vibrations with them, sharing music, and learning what a cello means to a community of bees.

Producer: Adrian Washbourne
Technical production by Mike Sherwood
Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar

A TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 3

The Essay: Five Cellos: Lost and Found

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

What happens when a musical instrument is destroyed, silenced or recovered?

What happens when a musical instrument is destroyed, silenced or recovered? Whose voice does it hold? And what can it tell us of past losses, and future possibilities?

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Five Cellos: Lost and Found

The Bee Cello

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3