We musicians like to talk about how we are a lot like athletes, in the way we use (and abuse) our bodies. I've heard it said many times, that playing the cello is the same as this sport or that sport, we just use smaller muscle groups. I agree. I am definitely feeling it. If I take breaks from practicing, I don't come back as fast as I used to. I played a run of West Side Story last week and my back is still giving me trouble. My core muscles need a serious overhaul (they never quite recovered from the child bearing business) and I'm working on that. But what about the actual daily routines that I have, besides learning new music? 

For a while now I have been in search of a maintenance routine that would allow me to keep my hands and body conditioned when I am not actively learning a new piece or preparing for a performance (on those occasions I generally have no problems motivating myself to practice). The parameters of that routine are simple: it needs to encourage sensitivity and accuracy while maintaining muscle conditioning, in the shortest possible time (three kids, full time job, no time...)

I have talked with many friends about their routine, some play a Bach Suite every day, some focus on Popper (I heard that a handy way to do this is to rotate each batch of 10 for a week, the way they were written). My teacher Erling Blondal Bengtsson was quite well-known for his routine of playing through a different Bach Suite every day, and on the 7th day all the Piatti Caprices. He said that they really touched on all aspects of cello that one needs. I definitely agree (I just can't do it). I was on the Popper Project for a while (I still have a couple to learn, but it's almost all done!) and playing 3 Popper Etudes a day certainly kept my hands conditioned, maybe a little too well - at times I was hurting so bad I had to take a day or two off from fear of injury. Plus it took a lot of time! More than I have most days, anyway. For the last year I've done my warm-ups (which I do religiously every time I practice), then playing around the circle of fifths, Poppers and Piattis, using the "I wonder what I feel like doing today" organizational method.

Today, I was talking about the issue with my massage therapist. He suggested that instead of flying by the seed of my pants, why not design a program for myself, approaching it like a fitness cross-training routine for cello. This makes so much sense it's a little ridiculous. Of course it should be a rotation of different cello-fitness routines, 2 days of muscle conditioning following by 3-5 days of cardio! Not sure what that exactly means yet, except that Popper is going to be heavily involved, as is Bach. It's easy to think about the left hand, but what about the bow, how does that factor in? Should there be explosiveness training involved, or are different forms of calisthenics enough if rotated with some isometric movement? And what does cardio mean for cello anyway? I think I just found my summer project...         

When I played my senior jury in DeKalb, IL in 1996, the only comment violinist Shmuel Ashkenazy had for me was, "you need a new cello". I'm sure he was 
right: I still play the same instrument I got from my teacher in high school. It's a very excellent student instrument, made by the Czech maker Julius Hubicka in 1920. I have to say that I am terribly attached to this cello, probably more so than I should be given that I had already grown out of it in 1996. I have to credit Mark Norfleet for keeping me afloat all this time: he really does an amazing job adjusting stringed instruments so that they can sound their absolute best. I think it would probably take some deep psychoanalysis to figure out WHY I haven't gotten a new instrument, but the short version is money, family (I have, after all, had three kids in the last 8 years) and also, lack of the perfect match...and I guess I always figured out I would know when the moment was right.  

As you can imagine, I have played many a cello in the last 16 years. New, old, thin, fat, brown, red (sorry, I had to quote my favorite book about Elmer, the patchwork colored elephant). I discovered very fast that the debate is between getting a newly made instrument, and getting an old instrument. For X dollars, You can probably get a better contemporary instrument than an old instrument, simply because the makers are still alive and they are still making the instruments. On the other hand, the older instruments appreciate more so they are better as investments, and there's also the fact that a new instrument changes quite a lot over time, and has to be played in. There's a camp that says you should only consider getting an old European-made instrument, and a camp that says the contemporary instruments are absolutely the only thing you should consider. I always thought myself rather in the second camp, since my quite physical playing style seems to fit the contemporary cellos well. But...

This summer I played a cello made by HC Silvestre in Paris in 1868: I guess that would fit in the "old" cello category. EXCEPT, it plays like a new instrument! Ahh, how to describe this cello...Complex, sophisticated, sturdy, not particularly beautiful to look at, more like a Pinot Noir or a Cab Franc rather than chocolate or coffee in sound. I could play Bach on it for eternity. Extended techniques? No problem, harmonics would pop out like firecrackers and sound like a million bucks. The tension is high on the strings, and so the cello plays hard - but that is just fine by me, since I am rather a physical player. In the month that I played the Silvestre I just scratched the surface of what we could do together, and got a glimpse of an amazing palette of colors and possibility. Mind you, I haven't fallen in love with it so much that my wits would completely leave me (I have heard of such things, and of people selling their houses for their instruments). But I AM trying to figure out how to buy it. With this cello, stars seem to be aligned and, if I could use another cliche, opportunity has come knocking. It for sale by a friend, and indeed, I would be able to get for a VERY fair price. Life is amazing, isn't it? 

If you want to hear how it sounds, stop by the "sounds" section, the short movement is from my "Lullaby Suite", Finnish Lullabies a la solo Bach.