Cello unwrapped
Kings Place, London

It is one of the mysteries of life that the language of music, while being inadequate to describe a chair or what we had for lunch, can say everything there is to say about fear, love, awe and other complex emotions that words often struggle with.

So when I meet the British cellist Natalie Clein, director of performance at Oxford University, professor of cello at the Royal Academy of Music and one of the many performers at this year’s “Cello Unwrapped” festival, that is the first thing I want to talk about – the nature of music’s communica-tive power. I want to understand how the wordless voice has such power to enthral.

In the festival, which spreads 50 concerts between now and December, with a break over the summer, Clein plays John Tavener’s Threnos for solo cello based on a chant from the Greek Orthodox funeral service (Tre Voci, 30 September). The bare instrument becomes the priest lamenting the passing soul. Although we hear no words, we understand the message by the shape of the melody and the phrasing of the play