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Podcast: The Essay
Episode: The Shipwrecked Cello
Description: 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...