大象传媒

Sean Rafferty is joined by pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard who performs live; composer James MacMillan discusses his new festival The Cumnock Tryst; and Steven Isserlis, joined by Charles Beare, plays a 'Trench' cello that was on the Western Front and made from an ammunition box, ahead of their lecture as part of the Royal Academy of Music's War Music season.

Steven Isserlis writes: Many years ago, Charles Beare (the doyen of all musical instrument experts the world over) was visited by an elderly man, who offered to sell him the cello that this elderly man had played in the trenches during the First World War. On Charles expressing interest, the man produced an artillery case, out of which he took various bits of a cello; he then speedily made the box into a working instrument, decorated with the colours of the Royal Suffolk Regiment. There was also a note inside the case from the poet Edmund Blunden, explaining that he had enjoyed having tea with this cellist, and recalling the impromptu concerts in the trenches. Even the bow is extraordinary - it has a hollow bit at the frog, through which you blow to get an A!