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Our guest on 25.07.2010 Sol Gabetta, Cellist

Presenter Peter Craven talks to Sol Gabetta about art as a consumer product, gifted children and perceptual disorders.

https://p.dw.com/p/ONLQ

The award-winning Argentinian cellist Sol Gabetta is a rising star of the classical music world. A graduate of the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin, she is now one of the most popular soloists in the world. Sol Gabetta was born in 1981 in the Argentinian city of Córdoba, the youngest of four children. Her parents soon recognised their daughter's talent and did all they could to foster it.

She began playing the violin at the age of three. But she received her first miniature cello from Japan at the age of four-and-a-half. By eight, she was taking cello lessons in Buenos Aires, with her father driving her 800 km from Cordóba every two weeks. She won her first cello competition in Argentina that very same year. The family moved to Europe to give Sol the best chance to succeed in her field. After periods of study in Madrid, Basel and Berlin, the celebrated cellist now lives near Basel, where she holds a professorship at the academy of music. Sol Gabetta has also founded her own chamber music festival, held every summer in the 800-year-old church at Olsberg near Basel.

Even as a student, she performed with big-name orchestras. But her international breakthrough came in September 2004, when she played with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Lucerne Festival. Sol Gabetta is now a regular fixture in the world's major concert halls. Her sixth album appeared in February 2010.

(First Broadcast on 31 January 2010)