The cello is a very fine instrument - just ask Yo-Yo Ma - but it has some fundamental weaknesses. The most obvious one is that there's no way to play more than two of its four strings simultaneously.

A performance by the Cleveland ensemble, Apollo’s Fire, on 9 March 2019 would come to be known as the ‘night the cello bow exploded’. Apollo’s Fire is a Grammy Award-winning Baroque orchestra that has ...