The Essay: Five Cellos - Lost and Found

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

The Shipwrecked Cello

Five Cellos: Lost and Found

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

The unlikely story of the reconstruction of the 'Mara' Stradivarius.

The 'Mara' Stradivarius was destroyed when it was thrown from a burning boat into the River Plate. Its reconstruction is one of the most unlikely stories in instrument history.

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.

 Destroyed and resurrected, how does an instrument's identity change? The 'Mara' Stradivarius is one of the greatest cellos in the world, but in the 1960s it was completely destroyed when the Trieste Trio nearly drowned jumping with it from a burning boat in thick fog into the River Plate. In travelling to Trieste, Kate Kennedy discovers how the Trio’s mental escape into a world of music during the second world war, shutting out the massacres around them, helped them to survive the accident that killed 55 others. She reflects on the cello’s unlikely rescue and lengthy reconstruction and how in the aftermath of its turbulent history its sound is considered by many to be better than ever.

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?

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