I saw Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s cello case before I saw him – strapped to his back, making him taller. While we talked, the instrument sat beside us, like a temporarily silent twin. A few weeks before, though, I’d heard it sing in the Barbican, London, as he swept through Shostakovich’s first cello concerto with the Czech Philharmonic, the piece with which he won BBC Young Musician nine years ago.
It is hard to believe Kanneh-Mason is still only 26: he is touring with some of the best orchestras and conductors in the world, has an MBE, is a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and, for the estimated hundreds of millions who watched, is the young cellist who played at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s wedding.
