For thirty years, cellist Matt Haimovitz has played a “rare, multimillion-dollar cello, which he calls Matteo—after Matteo Goffriller, the seventeenth-century Venetian luthier who built it,” writes Anna Russell in the 9/17 New Yorker. Recently, “while giving a lesson to a promising Canadian student, he dropped it, and the cello’s neck snapped. Since then, the instrument had been undergoing extensive repairs by a team of five luthiers…. The accident led to the discovery [that] Matteo’s three-hundred-year-old insides were collapsing.” At Reed Yeboah Fine Violins to try out the repaired cello, “a small group was gathered…. Haimovitz sat down and played … the prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1. He ended on a long note… ‘Hmm,’ he said…. Haimovitz played for a few more minutes, then stopped. [Composer Luna Pearl Woolf, Haimovitz’s wife, said] tentatively: ‘Is it possible that in its new iteration it wants a different kind of bow?’ A new bow was brought, and Haimovitz played again. He leaned in, listening. ‘Yeah,’ he said. He played … Philip Glass’s ‘Overture,’ and came up smiling: ‘Very cool!’ Everyone applauded…. He couldn’t help thinking about the old Matteo…. But then … ‘Gradually, the vibration felt the same.’ ”
Posted September 11, 2018
