Santu De Silva wrote of Yo-Yo Ma playing a "baroque" cello:

>Ma really seems to enjoy playing this repertoire, and it shows.  Also, he's
>not competing with mainline HIP folks (ah, that this phrase is needed now!
>Next it'll be "neo-HIP" and "quasi-HIP" ...  where will it end?), since
>they haven't done this kind of thing.

I don't know much about the technicalities, but my point was his attitude.
He is a very famous cellist, who doesn't *need* to try to play the baroque
cello.  Nevertheless that is what he does, and he is even ready to admit in
public how hard it is to learn to play on such an instrument.  That shows
his class.

>I would like a cellist, if he/she can afford it, to have two instruments,
>and learn to play both: one modern, one baroque.  This strict split into
>specialized camps is neither necessary nor desirable.  The word "purity"
>does not belong in music.  Well, perhaps it does, but it has acquired ugly
>connotations.

There are quite a number of cellists who *do* play both instruments, like
Anner Bijlsma, Pieter Wispelwey and others.  But they all say how hard it
is to switch from one instrument to the other, and that it usually takes a
couple of days to get used to the other instrument.  Oboists who play both
the baroque and the modern oboe say exactly the same.  About 20 years ago
the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra founded a baroque orchestra, in
which some of its members were going to play baroque instruments.  After
a couple of years it was abolished:  it was too hard for the players to
switch every time from baroque to modern instruments and vice versa.  So
specialism isn't always just a choice, often it is almost inevitable.

Johan van Veen
Utrecht (Netherlands)
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