Having built their virtual violin, Makris et al. were able to simulate the sound of a single plucked string—a playing technique called 'pizzicato'—and program it to pluck out several notes of Bach's 'Fugue in G Minor,' as well as 'Daisy Bell (A Bicycle Built for Two).'
Isserlis often has nightmares about his cello. Losing it. Leaving it somewhere. The strings falling off without warning. At sixty-seven, he is one of the world's most celebrated concert cellists, but when he thinks about these scenarios he frowns and gently shakes his baroque gray ringlets. For more than fifteen years, Isserlis has been playing an eighteenth-century Stradivarius cello named the Marquis de Corberon, for the French aristocrat who once owned it.