Following a Year-Long Restoration, NEC’s Tecchler Cello is Presented to Annie Hyung ’25 MM for the 2024-2025 Academic Year

The remarkable instrument underwent a significant restoration throughout the last year before being offered recently to cellist Annie Hyung ’25 MM, its new holder for 2024-2025. Hyung is a student of cello faculty member Laurence Lesser.  

“It’s an honor to have the chance to play the Tecchler for the next year!” said Hyung. “Mr. Lesser told me recently that his teacher, Gregor Piatigorsky, once said that the finest instruments only need to be touched by the musician. I’m starting to understand that I can’t force this instrument to speak; instead, a cello like this one makes the process of producing sound an active relationship between player and instrument. It has its own distinct voice, and I feel so much expressive freedom as I begin to explore the depth of the cello.” 

Christopher Reuning of Reuning & Son Violins in Brookline, MA, was a consultant and advisor throughout the restoration of the historic cello, which was conducted by Louis (Lee) Kupersmith of Fort Collins, Colorado. The top of the over 300-year-old instrument was carefully removed, various cracks were reinforced, and its ribs were restored. 

Tecchler cellos are extremely valuable and of supreme quality. Considered the greatest Roman cello maker, celebrated luthier David Tecchler worked building cellos, violins, violas, basses, and some mandolins and lutes for fifty years, building the cello in NEC's collection relatively early in his output. Tecchler was a contemporary of the great Antonio Stradivari, who lived and worked not far away in Cremona, Italy. NEC’s Joachim-Ma Stradivarius violin, awarded to Artist Diploma violinists, also underwent restoration this past year.

“The Italian instruments are prized because of their very special sound and great beauty of appearance,” said Lesser. 

Each spring, in keeping with alumnus John Tsu’s wish when he donated the Tecchler to NEC in 1999 that “future deserving cello students would have the opportunity to develop their art and expand their musical imagination,” cello students can participate in a competition for the opportunity to play the instrument for one academic year.

The list of former students who played NEC's Tecchler cello have achieved immense success as professional musicians. Another student of Lesser’s to have played it, Yina Tong ’12 MM, ’14 GD, now leads the cello section of the Lübeck Orchestra in Germany.  

“Giving wonderfully gifted young cellists a chance to use the Tecchler for a year awakens within them what can be learned from a great instrument,” said Lesser. “While the loan is only for a year, I have noticed that hearing and feeling from the instrument what range of sounds and colors a great cello can produce not only gives them a longing one day to have such an instrument for an extended period of time, but will stimulate them to draw out of any instrument its innate character and quality. In short, it feeds their imagination and helps them find their deeper personal voice.”

Watch Annie Hyung ’25 MM play the Tecchler cello below.