After A Year (and Major Surgery), A Cellist And His Cello Are Reunited

The accident led to the discovery of other, more insidious problems: Matteo’s three-hundred-year-old insides were collapsing. The top was losing its arch; the cracks were widening. “A domino effect,” Matt Haimovitz said. He visited every two months. Once, he arrived to find cello parts scattered around the room, attended to by different experts, like an intensive-care unit. “For thirty years, it goes everywhere with me, and then, so suddenly, not to have it around? And then to see it—” He broke off, full of emotion.

Classical Music Won’t Be Saved By Another Leonard Bernstein: Alex Ross

“His charisma was indeed potent, but as Bernstein recedes into history he seems more a product of his time than an agent of transformation. … The aspirational America of the mid-twentieth century was looking for a Bernstein — a native genius who could knock off Broadway tunes as fluently as he conducted Brahms — and one was duly found. There will not be another, not because talent is lacking but because the culture that fostered him is gone.”