3rd November 2025 年11月3日

It’s ironic really. Here’s me, a violinmaker surrounded by instruments, and I can’t find a ‘cello which I really like……

It’s that lovely slow movement from Mendelssohn’s 1st piano trio which is bugging me. Surely the A string on this ‘cello could sound better 🎵 ?

My eye turns to a ‘cello which I made in my Wiesbaden days. Gathering dust in the corner. Needs a new soundpost. Back then I fitted it with a Stahlhammer metal spike. I’m disillusioned with that now, but I can’t get it out.

Oh come on! With a few bangs of a hammer 🔨 out it comes. At last. Now I fit in a new carbon spike, fit in a new soundpost, and, because I can’t think of anything else, give the instrument a Jargar A string. Now I would never normally use this string, but It just happened to be there..

Next I rehaired my favourite Richard Grünke bow 🏹

Now I tune up.🎶 Where on earth did all these tuning forks come from? Must be an occupational hazard…..

Sit down. Bow meets string. At once the ‘cello springs to life. Oh wow! 💥 This is fun. It is so responsive! But a bit brash. Needs breaking in, like a wild horse. Suddenly my slumbering passion for chamber music takes a quantum leap forward out of the darkness. Can’t wait to meet up with my Kammermusik colleagues……

Then there’s all that ‘cello and piano music just waiting to be resurrected…………..

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Meanwhile, Outside my house the work is starting. The men arrive at the crack of dawn. They grasp take-away coffees bought from the bakery across the road. Maybe they glance up at the sky, but the crane has already made its first whirring sound so it is time to start.

“harte Arbeit” says the foreman, when I later find him having a break sitting in his van by my entrance. “Eine Monat” he says…..“dann is fertig”. I think he means the basic shell of the building. I`ll believe it when I see it…….

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I’ve never in my life known anyone from Mexico, but thanks to hiking that’s all changed. So it was that I found myself on the Día del los Muertos, the 1st November, at the Catrinas and Catrines parade in Frankfurt. Apparently on this day the spirits of the departed return, and you do your best to welcome them. And that means creating little altars for them, dressing up and putting on the music. A celebration in other words. Nothing morbid. Laura and her friend had even brought a Mexican dog with them…..

And then off the parade went, starting at the Festhalle and heading towards Bockenheim…….

It seems nothing can dampen the Mexican spirit…even a wet German November……..

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Time for an orbital (!) shift to Japan, where my local correspondent has been enjoying some non-Japanese food in Yokohama. Yes, here you see some yummy steamed buns – Xiao Long Bao……..

in one of Yokohama’s many yummy restaurants……

When there is mention of Yokohama I have to think of the NYK Hikawamaru…always waiting there each time I return…….

I find this ship fascinating because of all it has been through….and what it’s passenger lists reveal. Under the militarism of the Showa era, in 1932, Charlie Chaplain used it on part of his world tour. Emperor Hirohito’s would-be assassin from Korea, Lee Bong-chang, used it a year later…then the founder of Judo, Kano Jigoro. Hundreds of Lithuanian Jews used it to flee the Nazis (via Vladivostock) in 1940-41.

As it was only one of two Japanese ships left at the end of WWII (when it was converted to a hospital ship), it was used as a cargo ship until the 1950s, when it was converted back to a cruise liner. It is now gracefully retired in a far corner of Yokohama’s Minato Mirai みなとみらい – “Port of the future”.

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Musicians of the future. I find that music students are never at a loss when it comes to imaginative new projects. Here I am in the fantastic new Wolfgang Rihm Saal at the Karlsruhe Musikhochschule.

The opera is called “Haus Wahnsinn” (House of Madness), and we are being swept seamlessly through a compilation of Gluck, Rossini, Wagner and Rihm, exposing currents of power, authoritarianism, dreams of freedom, conflicts of generation….. Heady stuff.

Family interest has brought me here of course. But wow, budding opera singers, the lot of them…..

……and supported by a really good orchestra (with an orchestral pit the envy of many an opera house!). Lots of juicy ‘cello lines in the Wagner “Tannhäuser” excerpts naturally…..

Curtain call at the Première……….here is some background to the whole project….https://riwa26.de/dokumentation/timeline/

Well, that’s all for now.

Thank you for reading, and feel free to forward on to anyone who might be interested.

読んでくれてありがとう！。ご興味がある方にはお気軽に転送してください。

See you またね 🎻

nigelwruddock@gmail.com

The End

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終わり