happy owners of magnificent cellos....

Both I and my good friend Oliver Walsh are proud and happy owners of magnificent cellos made for us by the brilliant luthier Warren Nolan Fordham. These two cellos are made entirely from Australian tone woods. It is interesting that when Oliver took his Aussie cello with him to Amsterdam he was told that it was not suitable to be used in a European orchestra, it’s tone being too individual, and would not blend with the other cellos of the orchestra which would have all been made from European tone woods.

The tonal demands on stringed instruments over the ages have changed dramatically.We now have bigger halls  and this means that instruments being played in such venues need mumore resonance and tone. This has also led to changes in HOW the instrument is played. The degree of finesse that was audible in a smaller hall would be lost in a bigger hall. Therefore it is unrealistic to expect an old, unaltered, unstrengthened 300 year old instrument to be used in our big concert halls.

Our luthiers are expert. They have taken native tone woods , unknown in Europe and are producing string instruments which easily compete in quality with contemporary European instruments. Our budding string players should be encouraged to patronise our local makers . Why should what is new and Australian have to compete with what is old and European? What they buy today will only increase in value and quality as did the old European instruments they have been told to covet.