Everyone’s cello favourite – Saint-Saens’ “The Swan”

 in Cello / Della Sotheby / Lucy Straughan by

Sue-Ellen Paulsen plays Saint-Saens' The Swan at the Hobart Book Shop launch of A Distant Prospect, 12 February 2013.

Sue-Ellen Paulsen plays Saint-Saens’ The Swan at the Hobart Book Shop launch of A Distant Prospect, 12 February 2013.

When Sue-Ellen Paulsen, Principal Cello of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, launched A Distant Prospect in Hobart, it was always going to be her cello performance of “The Swan”, from Camille Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals, to make the crowd swoon!

“The Swan” was also Della Sotheby’s first request, upon discovering that Lucy plays cello, in Chapter 4 of A Distant Prospect:

Della exclaimed. ‘Why! She’s my teacher too! Well, I never! How long have you been learning from her?’

‘Five and a half years it would be now.’

‘Goodness gracious! To think we’ve only now begun to know each other. I’ve never seen you at a recital. I would have known you straight away if I had. Where have you been hiding? I say, would you play me some?’

I shook my head.

‘Please,’ she begged, ‘I’d love to hear you. You don’t often get to hear a ’cello, and it’s such a beautiful instrument. Come on, sit down and show me. Can you play The Swan? I love The Swan!’

Della patted her hand on the seat of the chair and passed me my bow which she herself had tightened. I slid my thumb up and down the neck of my instrument then worked a phrase over the fingerboard. I lifted my bow….