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A cello has no language, yet it possesses a vocabulary wide enough to tell, bear witness, and make connections across time and continents, which is brought to life in this brilliant new book. In this luminous narrative, Kate Kennedy, a writer and cellist herself, weaves together the story of four cellists who suffered various forms of persecution, injury, and misfortune. The stories are those of the forgotten Jewish cellist Pal Hermann, who is likely to have been murdered by the Nazis in Lithuania during the Holocaust; Lise Cristiani, another forgotten performer, who is considered to be the first female professional cello soloist and who embarked on an epic concert tour of Siberia in the 1850s taking with her a Stradivarius cello that can be seen to this day in a museum in Cremona in northern Italy; Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who played in the orchestra at Auschwitz and survived spells in both that camp and in Bergen-Belsen; and Amedeo Baldovino of the Trieste piano trio, whose'Mara'Stradivarius was lost in a shipwreck in the River Plate between Buenos Aires and Uruguay but later recovered from the water and repaired. Interwoven with these remarkable and often moving stories are a series of'detours'that offer a foil to these remarkable lives. Cello examine the themes explored in the narratives from different perspectives, drawing together historical research, personal experience, and interviews and encounters with contemporary cellists in this unique book that will resonate long after the final page.

'Just as a cello's voice is divided across four strings, each with its own colour and character, this is a journey in four parts, in search of four players and their instruments...'In Cello, Kate Kennedy weaves together the lives of four remarkable cellists who suffered various forms of persecution, injury and misfortune. The Hungarian Jewish cellist and composer Pál Hermann managed to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo for much of the Second World War but was eventually captured and murdered. Lise Cristiani, the first female professional cello soloist, undertook an epic – and ultimately fatal – concert tour of Siberia in the 1850s, taking with her one of the world's greatest Stradivari cellos. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was incarcerated in both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen camps, only surviving because she was the cellist in the Auschwitz-Birkenau women's orchestra. Amedeo Baldovino of the Trieste Piano Trio was forced to jump from a burning ship with his'Mara'Stradivari, losing the cello, and nearly losing his own life when the boat was shipwrecked near Buenos Aires.Counterpointing the themes raised by these extraordinary stories are a sequence of interludes that draw together the author's reflections on the nature and history of the cello, and her many interviews and encounters with contemporary cellists. Kate Kennedy's own relationship with the cello is a complicated one. As a teenager, she suffered an injury to her arm that imposed severe limitations on her career as a performer on the instrument that was her first love. She realised that, in order to start to understand what the cello meant to her, she needed to find out what the cello – and, crucially, the absence of the cello – had meant to some other cellists, past and present. Kate Kennedy has written an eloquent and multitextured homage to this warmest of stringed instruments – part quest narrative, part detective story, part philosophical meditation.

Eduard Steuermann (1892–1964) setzte nicht nur als Pianist Maßstäbe für die Interpretation der Schönberg-Schule, sondern fand als Komponist zu einem eigenen Ton innerhalb der Moderne. In seiner umfangreichen Korrespondenz mit Arnold Schönberg, Theodor W. Adorno und René Leibowitz wird eine faszinierende Musikerpersönlichkeit lebendig und zudem auf einzigartige Weise an ein exemplarisches Emigrantenschicksal erinnert. Der Band enthält sämtliche 274 erhaltenen Briefe dieser Korrespondenzen aus der Zeit von 1912 bis 1964 in eingehender Kommentierung sowie einführende Essays zu den drei Briefkorpora. Systematisch erschlossen wird die Korrespondenz in einer ausführlichen Grundlegung, in der in sechs Kapiteln wesentliche Aspekte von Steuermanns kompositorischem Schaffen, seinem Leben und seiner Kunst des Klavierspiels dargestellt werden. Auf der beiliegenden CD sind, teils in Welterstaufnahmen, die bedeutenden Klavierwerke Steuermanns zu hören, gespielt vom Pianisten J. Marc Reichow.

The long-awaited biography of the first woman to serve as United States attorney general, written with exclusive access to the personal archives of Reno and her family and based on over 40 interviews with Reno's friends and colleagues In this first full biography of former United States attorney general Janet Reno (1938–2016), Judith Hicks Stiehm describes the independent and unconventional life of a woman who grew up on a rural South Florida homestead and rose to occupy one of the top positions in the United States government, whose ethics and example served as inspiration for women in law and politics across the nation. In telling Janet Reno's story, Stiehm incorporates personal details from her full and exclusive access to family papers and photos, as well as inside information from Reno's own materials and interviews with over 40 of Reno's personal and professional acquaintances. Stiehm begins by tracing Reno's free-range childhood, her college years at Cornell and experience at Harvard Law School as one of 16 women in a class of over 500, the challenges she faced as a woman lawyer launching her career in 1960s Miami, and her 15 years as Miami-Dade state attorney. In 1993, Reno was appointed to serve in Washington as United States attorney general in the Clinton administration, the first woman to occupy the position in the history of the nation. Stiehm tells how Reno engaged with the East Coast elite as an outsider, seen by many as outspoken and eccentric—yet scrupulous, uncompromising, and immune to influence. Stiehm explores the reasons behind Reno's decisions in cases she handled during her tenure, including the siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas; Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation; the Oklahoma City bombing; and the Elián González controversy. Janet Reno's life was an illustration to many that it is possible to hold high office while consistently speaking and acting on principle. This biography examines the guiding forces that shaped Reno's character, the trails blazed by Reno in her professional roles, and the lasting influence of Reno on American politics and society to this day.