The Strad Calendar 2021: Giovanni Battista Rogeri cello 1695

The Strad’s 2021 Calendar celebrates the work of Dextra Musica, the Norwegian foundation that has built up a fine collection of historical and contemporary instruments over the past 15 years. All the instruments are in daily use, being loaned out both to top soloists and to up-and-coming young players. Some of the treasures include Stradivari’s golden-period ‘Rivaz, Baron Gutmann’ violin, now played by Eldbjørg Hemsing, the 1744 Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ used by Henning Kraggerud, and the 1783 Guadagnini cello once owned by Rostropovich, which was sold for a record £1.93 million in 2018.

Giovanni Battista Rogeri cello 1695

Giovanni Battista Rogeri is one of the most important cello makers of the classical period. His prolific work on a pattern that seems to be entirely original to him indicates a strong interest in the cello by the citizens of Brescia, where he moved in about 1664. Born in Bologna in around 1642, Rogeri trained in the workshop of Nicolò Amati in 1661–62. The techniques and skills he acquired there enabled him to establish himself in Brescia, which had lost its leading violin maker Giovanni Paolo Maggini to the plague in 1632, and with him the distinctive Brescian tradition of instrument making. The elegance and refinement of his work is distinctively Cremonese and is to the fore in this beautiful 1695 cello; the particularly handsome wood used is also typical and indicative of his ambitious style. The model is especially interesting and in fact quite radical in terms of the development of the cello. The arching is flat, unlike the bulbous forms of most of his contemporary makers, and the outline is broad but quite short, anticipating the changes made by Stradivari to his own cello model in around 1707.

The instrument was in fact for some time thought to have been made by Stradivari, and was known as the ‘Lancashire Strad’ in honour of its owner in the late 19th century, the collector Richard Bennett of Lancashire. It had been brought from Italy by the celebrated English cellist John Crosdill, and passed to the Prince of Wales (later King George IV), an enthusiastic amateur cellist. It was played most recently by Donald McCall. At some time in its history the head of the cello was replaced by another, made by his near-namesake Francesco Rugeri in Cremona in around 1690.

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Photos: Richard Valencia