A TRENCH cello, cobbled together by musically minded soldiers in the First World War from wood and an ammunition case, is to be played publicly for the first time in decades by Britain’s top cellist, Steven Isserlis.
He was first told about the cello by Charles Beare, a stringed instrument expert who had been looking after it since it was brought into his shop in 1963 by an old soldier.
The soldier, Harold Triggs, an amateur cellist, had kept it since serving with the Royal Sussex Regiment in the Great War but had apparently wanted to sell it for safekeeping. He died a year later.
“When he brought it in, he would not play it,” said Beare. “I suspect it would have brought back too many unhappy memories of colleagues who died in the trenches.”
Inside the cello is a note from the poet Edmund Blunden, a friend of Siegfried Sassoon who served with Triggs in the Sussex regiment in France.
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When Triggs met Blunden in 1962, he showed him the cello and the poet wrote: “Having seen our old friend Harold Triggs carrying this notable instrument in the Ypres region in 1917, I have the pleasure of seeing him and it happily together still, 1962 Edmund Blunden.”
They stuck the note to the inside of the cello which will be played by Isserlis on Radio 3’s In Tune later this month and then at the Royal Academy of Music on September 22.
“Charles [Beare] told me about this cello and invited me down to Kent where he now keeps it,” said Isserlis.
“I went,taking my own strings as the original ones had gone. We got it going, and after a while out came this rather wonderful, plaintive and poignant sound.”