Paul Otten on the legacy
of his mother
‘Mom mother used to play cello. Not on a professional level, but she did play in orchestras and performed from time to time. Her three sisters also played an instrument: transverse flute, violin and piano. They often made music together. Nice memories.'
‘They got their musicality from their grandmother, who used to play violin. The father of that grandmother was a painter by the way, called Menso Kamerlingh Onnes. An artistic family, you could say. My mother's grandmother's memoirs recount that she played the violin several times with Albert Einstein and Paul Ehrenfest. They were visiting her uncle at the time: Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist. I find that a lovely anecdote.
My mother had that cello for years. It was already a bit chipped in places and was no longer qualitative enough to donate to The Netherlands Musical Instruments Foundation. But she did leave a legacy to the foundation. A substantial sum.
When I got a call asking what I thought about using the money to buy a bow, I was initially a bit surprised. I had expected the sum to be large enough to buy an instrument. But when I heard it was a unique piece, over two centuries old, and that the renowned violinist Maria Milstein would be loaning it, I knew immediately that my mother would have been thrilled too.’
Check out the bow