Europe 2013: Cello Hunt Edition

September 4, 2013

Today dawned with overcast skies, but the promise (soon fulfilled) of warmth. I had had a good conversation with the upstairs neighbor, Caroline, who recently started playing cello, and she'd given me the names of some of the violin shops around town. I made a plan, and I was ready.

Cori and Jens had decided to leave mid-day today, so I took a walk with Cori to chat before they disappeared. We only rarely get the chance to talk between our busy lives.

Marta and I set out, and knocked those violin shops over like bowling pins. The first up was Ramsaier-Gorbach, since they were the only shop on the list that was open in the morning. It was a little weird to walk into a shop and declare I wanted to buy a cello without any introduction -- I'm so used to gently leading myself up to a topic with lots of thinking, and research, and thinking again. The thing is, I've done all that, and I've known for a few years that I wanted a new cello, so this was hardly a new thing. Still, it felt oddly impulsive.

In any case, Ramsaier had a number of interesting choices for me, and I quickly narrowed it down to two: one which I really liked the looks of, and one which I preferred for its tone. The looker has the appearance of being a very well-preserved centuries-old cello, which appeals to me quite a bit. The one with the nicer tone looks like every other cello in the world, but has a nice, full, mellow sound. The tone coming out of the better-looking cello was a little bit more nasal and didn't have the full body of the other one. Both were admirably loud, and (for all that I haven't played my cello at home in a few months) seemed to sound better than my current cello.

Neither of them grabbed me as being a cello I *have* to have, but I would be pretty happy with either. In any case, this was only the first shop, and these were new cellos (in my price range, that's pretty much all I'm going to find, at least according to Ramsaier). I had three more on the list, so I figured I needed to record my impressions, and move on. With Marta's help, I took some pictures of the one with the good tone, and we moved on.

The next stop was lunch. Most of the shops on the list don't open until 1 pm, and it was only 12:30. We had literally 200m to walk to get to the next shop, so why not have a little spinach and cheese streudel? And I did.

The next shop, Peter Tunkowitsch, buzzed us in, and turned out to be one fairly avuncular guy in a tiny tiny shop, with just barely enough space to sit down and play a few scales (I'm so competely out of practice on anything that all I can play at this point is scales -- I'm sure Marta is getting sick of repeated C scales). When I told him my price limit, he said he had only one instrument worthy of notice, conveniently just a few hundred euros under my price limit.

It was a pretty cello, with a deeply flamed back, and an interesting, white-flecked fingerboard. It was made in Germany in 2003, giving it a nominally better provenance than the new Romanian cellos I had tried in Ramsaier's shop. But its voice, while nice, was just about as pleasing to me as the voice of my preferred cello back at the first shop. And it was nearly twice the price. We thanked him after a scale or two, and moved on. Caroline, who'd given me the names of the various shops, had wrinkled her nose a bit while writing down Tunkowitsch's name, saying his selection was small, and she didn't much like dealing with him. I'm sure this influenced me a little bit, but the fact that he had exactly one instrument to the five or so Ramsaier had trotted out in quick succession meant it was going to be a short visit.

Our next shop, once again 300m away, was Walter Neubauer. He has a website that pops up pretty frequently in searches for violin shops in Vienna, and his shop was very nice, with relatively lots of room. The other two had felt very crowded, so this was a nice change. He was a pleasant man to deal with, but regretted that he had only two instruments that fell within my price, and I tried them both out. Of the two, oddly, I preferred the cheaper one. Maybe my tastes run cheap. He also kindly let me try the cello that was twice my price, and its distinct nasal tone immediately turned me off. I didn't even finish the scale. It probably carries better in an orchestra situation, but the last thing I want from my instrument is a piercing sound.

One of the problems with all this is that I have no idea what any of these cellos sound like to anyone else. I know that my experience of the sound is different than anyone else's, because I've had problems in the past with being able to tune properly: if I held the cello away from me, and played a string, the tuning sounded different than if I held it properly. Very odd. But I know I'm operating in the cello's near field, and you only have to get a foot or two away before you're operating in the far field (ask two recording engineers how to mic a cello, and you'll get five or six different suggestions, all to do with how far away to place the microphones).

In any case, we thanked Herr Neubauer very much, and moved on. The next shop, Christoph Schachner's, was actually a 20 minute walk away, so we had a walking break. As we walked, I remarked to myself how ridicuously pretty Vienna is. All the buildings are beautiful, most of them with carvings and scrollwork, and many of them with statuary integrated nicely into the design. We were walking northish along Schubertring, a broad street with trees down each side, and a park on the far side from us.

Streetcars (proper, San Francisco style streetcars) run practically everywhere in Vienna. They cover the whole city, and one could really live in Vienna with no need for a car. Indeed, a car would be a hindrance in many cases: you need to find a parking spot, traffic is slow even off peak times, and owning a car would cost more per month than just buying a transit pass. The only reason you need a car at all is if you have business outside of the city, in an area where the trains or busses don't run. Reinhart and Marta didn't own a car for many years, but the train service to Weitra was closed down, and they were compelled to get a car since they need to be up there so often.

By this time, the sun was also out, which helps with the whole "beautiful city" impression.

We reached our next and final destination to find the door locked, and no one home. After a bit of consternation at this, I remembered that this was the shop that wasn't open until 3 pm (and closes at 6 pm). We waited until three, but he still didn't show up, so I called the number he had on his window, and he said he'd be there in around a quarter of an hour. No problem, I said, I'd wait.

When he did arrive, we had a nice conversation, but he didn't have anything to show me at that moment. He had a few, he thought, that he could put his hands on that might meet my requirements, but wouldn't be able to have them ready until later in the day, or perhaps tomorrow. He was extremely agreeable and pleasant to talk to, with none of the standoffishness of the other shop people. (Not that they were unpleasant, he was just immediately very friendly.)

He said he'd call me later today and tell me what was up, and hopefully he'd have something to show me today. His other shop is a 3 minute walk from the Neunteufel abode, and we agreed it would be funny if he found the perfect thing in his other shop.

Then we pointed our noses homeward, and set out. A little on-the-way shopping (including a new spare key for my bike, so I can get rid of the dodgy original key), and we were home.

It turned out that Cori and Jens had not yet taken off, and we ended up having a very nice dinner at an Italian restaurant a few blocks away. We sat outside, conveniently in view of the streetcar stop, which meant every few minutes, Finn was rapt watching the trains go by. Before we left, he asserted that I wasn't allowed to use the U-bahn today, because it belonged to him and Cori. He was quite serious, and it took a bit of talking to bring him around to the fact that all those other people on the U-bahn with him had a right to be there too. He is utterly fascinated with trains and farm machinery, which is, of course, something quite foreign to my own personal experience (hah).

Mid-meal, my phone went off, and it was Herr Schachner calling back to say he'd located two instruments he thought I'd like. It sounds like he's pushing pretty hard on the price I set, so I have a feeling they'll be out of my range, but we're going to meet tomorrow afternoon at his shop, and we'll see what we'll see. He promised me at least one of them is fairly old, which is a bit of a clarion call to me -- I'd much rather play a piece of history than have a brand new cello.

Then we bade Cori and Jens farewell (they like driving at night, because Finn goes out like a light, and a sleeping two-and-a-half year old is dramatically preferrable to one who's awake). They drove off in their blue Fiat van, very nicely built out as a very small motorhome, sort of halfway between a VW camper van and a "real" motorhome.

Then Reinhart showed me his old radio. He started collecting about five years ago, and this was the pinnacle of his achievements: a WWII German Luftwaffe radio. It's a receiver, intended to be used at air bases. It is, more or less, a big box with knobs on, no surprise there. But it's a bit of living history, and I really enjoyed getting the tour.

So tomorrow, I will probably do a bit more touristing around Vienna, since I don't need to be at Schachner's shop until 3. There's a place called the Musikhaus Tauschcenter ("Music House Swap Center") I may visit tomorrow as well. I think they're mostly concerned with guitars and drum kits and the like -- think Trading Musician in Seattle -- but the description stresses accoustic stringed instruments. Might be a good place to visit for a laugh, or perhaps I'll find my unexpected gem there (highly unlikely, in such a musically well-trained city as this). We shall see.

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Created by Ian Johnston. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.