As a child, he played the cello and hoped to become a great cellist.

One was the showing of an unidentified film fragment from 1949, showing the great cellist playing Schubert.

David Popper was one of the last great cellists who did not use an endpin.

Mstislav Rostropovich, the great cellist and conductor, recently called her "a pianist with no limits at all, none whatsoever."

'But perhaps that is not so bad, if you want to be a great cellist?'

"I think it can be played like Renata Tebaldi sang, or the way a great cellist plays a solo," he said.

Slava, to those in the know, is Mstislav Rostropovich, the great cellist turned conductor.

He went on in the next five years to study with many great cellists, including the genius cellist-editor Leonard Rose.

This difficulty has not stopped the concerto from becoming a favourite of the great virtuoso cellists.