When I was 15 I won a scholarship to study at Wells Cathedral school, a specialist music school in Somerset. I had wanted to be a cellist for as long as I could remember. I got up at 5am to play scales, practised at lunchtime and returned to my cello after lessons. I discovered the fireworks of Dvořák, the frenetic drive and nerviness of Shostakovich and the melancholy of Bloch. But above all I fell deeply in love with Elgar’s Cello Concerto.
One evening a year later, as I was preparing for a major competition, I pushed myself too far. I was playing a demanding study involving endless trills, working my weaker fourth and fifth fingers too hard, when something felt as if it snapped in my forearm, and I felt a burning pain between my wrist and elbow. When it hadn’t got better after a day or two I started to panic. Days became weeks. I still could not write or play. The school sent me to see specialists, but no one offered a conclusive diagnosis, or any treatment that proved effective.
Months passed. I spent the days sitting in lessons, unable to write, and the evenings wandering the cobbled streets of Wells like a ghost, my arm in a sling. The concerto opportunities, recitals and competitions I had been preparing for came and went.
I would take my cello to the practice room and sit with it, placing my copy of the Bach Cello Suites on the stand in front of me. Just looking at the Elgar music made me want to cry, so that stayed in my music case. But Bach was different. In silence I imagined exactly how it would feel to play each note.
When I wasn’t sitting with my instrument, I was punishing myself for my own stupidity. My technique had probably not been secure enough for the demands I was placing on it. But now it was too late. What was I if I wasn’t a cellist? I lost so much weight and eventually, my parents were summoned and told I needed to be hospitalised. I realised I had to make a decision. I decided to live, even if that meant a future without my cello.
Over two years, as I gradually recovered a little of the use of my arm, with a combination of physiotherapy and rest, I found that I could build up my stamina by playing early music, such as Handel and Bach, on a baroque cello. Because you have to coax a sound out of strings made of gut that will squeak if you attack them in the way you might when playing more contemporary music on a modern instrument, the movements the historical cello requires are gentler and lighter. I learned to write with my other hand, and after university found that I was just about able to get through music college, if I stuck to this gentler repertoire. And I could perform, not full-time, but enough to enjoy working with some of the top early music ensembles. However, the constant possibility of my arm letting me down has never left me, and quite often, if I’ve overdone it, I will find that I lose strength and the pain becomes too much to play.
The catalyst for change came, unexpectedly, during a photoshoot. I needed an up-to-date picture for appearances so I booked a session in a studio. The photographer suggested I get my cello and see what images of playing might look like through the camera. Initially I remonstrated – I didn’t see myself primarily as a cellist any more. But then I fetched it and sat playing snatches of Bach. The photographer became much more animated, snapping away. In that moment, the lens pointing at my instrument and me, I began to understand something I had only half sensed until then. Away from my cello, my shadow was missing. Without it I felt vulnerable, incomplete. But with my instrument I was protected and entirely happy in my own skin.
During that photoshoot I realised I needed to find out what the cello, and its absence, had meant to other cellists, in order to start to understand what it meant to me. So I planned a journey across Europe to uncover the stories of cellists and their instruments.
I took my cello on trains to the farthest corners of Lithuania, Germany, France, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands. I encountered cellos destroyed by war and shipwreck, even a cello that had been turned into a beehive. I met and played with cellists who are incredibly resourceful (one famous cellist, having lost the use of his right thumb, straps his bow on to his hand with a bicycle inner tube). I discovered the story of forgotten Hungarian cellist Pál Hermann, murdered by the Nazis in 1944, whose cello was rescued from under Gestapo guard, but then disappeared during the 1950s. I was able to trace the instrument, and now Hermann’s story and his cello will be the keynote in the European parliament’s commemoration of the Holocaust in January.
Hermann and all the cellists I learned about and met had different stories to tell, but however different their experiences were from mine, I found we all shared a passionate connection to our cellos. I also began to realise that in asking these questions I was enabling other silenced musicians to tell their narratives of injury. Injury is a taboo, a stigma in the world of professional music. Few of us admit that we struggle, as the response can often feel judgmental: “Oh, it’s probably because your technique wasn’t good enough”, or “better not book her, she’ll only cancel”. I realised that while much is in place to support injured sportspeople, very little has been done to tackle the stigma of musicians’ injuries. Yet the demands we place on our bodies are extreme, and when it goes wrong, lives and careers are wrecked. There isn’t an orchestra, music college or specialist school that doesn’t have to confront the issue.
Over the course of my travels, I learned that I was not alone. What’s more, my experience might actually help others. I am also beginning to look for ways to return to the repertoire I loved. Supported by the community I have formed around me, of musicians in similar situations, I find I can celebrate every concert as a privilege, and a step towards recovery, without being overwhelmed by the possibility that it might be my last.
• Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound is published by Bloomsbury (£30). To support the Guardian and the Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com.
