What a privilege to be able to play one of the great concertos of all times in one of the most gorgeous halls in the world, Boston Symphony Hall! I played here already three years ago, but I was far too nervous to actually enjoy and live the moment - tonight I was much more at ease, and it felt really special. Actually, today we even had two concerts; the dress rehearsal was an open one, and when I got to the hall at 9 am to practice I saw already many people streaming towards the hall. I got scared, thought, that maybe the rehearsal didn’t start at 10:30 but at 9:30. But no, it was just the free seating which made people come really easy so that could grab the best seat in the house. At 10:30 the house was packed and we didn’t “rehearse” but played a full-powered performance for this lovely audience. Read the rest of this entry »

Actually I wanted to write this text on my way from Paris to Cologne in the train, but sitting together in the TGV (train grand vitesse = French superfast train) next to my good friend and pianist Steven Osborne prohibited me to do anything else but talking to him about life, love and music - which means this text had to wait until my next journey, which was obviously not the  drive in a rent-a-car from Cologne to Berlin the night after our concert in Siegburg, but now, a day later, on my flight from Berlin via Frankfurt to Boston (long live the online-checkin: I am sitting in the exit-row with endless leg-space - no seat in front of me!).. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night Steven and me played the devilishly difficult Sonata by Charles-Valentin Alkan for the first time in public, a small but very attentive audience in Antwerp, Belgium, since having recorded it last December in London for Hyperion. It was pure coincidence that the cd had just been released last week; the original release date was supposed to be end of November, and nobody had told us about the change of dates - lucky move, since people always prefer buying the piece they just have heard. Read the rest of this entry »

Oy wey, I feel guilty, haven’t written in such a long time, and now I am writing without having anything specific to say. This will be probably the shortest blog ever on this page, but somehow I have to justify its existence, and since some people seem to read it, I don’t want to stop without at least trying to keep writing at least once a month. I just finished playing another Elgar performance in the very charming little city of Madison - I think it wasn’t a bad performance, but somehow I didn’t feel the closest of all connections with the audience; there was quite some coughing in the first minutes of the piece, and I guess it’s my upbringing to look for the blame in myself. I didn’t manage to engage them and draw them in with what I had to say with the music which resulted in the fact that they weren’t quite with me. Read the rest of this entry »

Chilling out and preparing for a short night on the plane from Toronto to Munich I take the opportunity of the wireless service here in the Air Canada Lounge to write about my thoughts of my past week. I played the Dvorak with the orchestra of Kitchener/Waterloo (near Toronto) conducted by their very talented young chief conductor Edwin Outwater. I met him before in San Francisco and heard such wonderful things about him from the musicians of the SF Symphony that I decided to come to Canada for only these performances to open his 2nd season - and I didn’t regret that decision: each performance got more flexible and more profound, a real treat for a maybe over-played concerto. Read the rest of this entry »

Gosh, I need a break - recording one program, performing a full recital with another one with no time in between, wears the most resilient musician down. Last night Markus Becker and me played the opening of the Reger-Festival in Weiden (near Nuremberg), and if somebody would have listened to our rehearsals, he or she wouldn’t have believed that we were attempting to play that repertoire in concert the same day. We had good excuses for not being ready though; both of us just came out of tough recording projects, him doing Reger-Bach arrangements for Hyperion, I did the two very difficult Prokofiev Concertos. But at the end of the day, the audience in Weiden didn’t know about this and deserved a good concert. Read the rest of this entry »

When I arrived last night at home in Berlin after having been gone for the week, my wife gave me a hug, looked at me and claimed that I had lost weight. This morning after sleeping like a child for almost 9 hours I verified her claim: 3 kilos (6,6 US pounds) in 6 days - and that without sports or dieting, just pure and utter stress. What had happened?

Well, the last week I had spent in  beautiful Bergen, Norway, in order to record for Hyperion two big concertos by Prokofiev, his op.58 “Concerto” and the more famous “Sinfonia Concertante”, both considered among the toughest pieces for cello; technically and physically that might be true. As usually I was very well taken care of by my favorite producer-team of all times, Andrew Keener and Simon Eadon, and the Bergen Philharmonic under their “chief” Andrew Litton was in splendid shape, but he schedule was grueling. Read the rest of this entry »

While my little family is still sleeping in the hotelroom here in London I am taking the opportunity to do a bit of writing before the gap to my last entry is too long and I broke my promise to write at least twice a month. Normally they are never travelling with me, but since the Royal Albert Hall is one of the most amazing places to play at in the world (and one of the most scary as well - soooo big, and without amplification we feel like little dwarfs in front of far too many people) I thought it would be nice for them to see their father/husband sweat. And sweating they’ve got plenty of to see…. Read the rest of this entry »

1988/89 I spent studying in Cincinnati, OH. My cello teacher turned out to be rather lame, so I focused a bit on playing quartet and taking lessons with the quartets in residence there, the LaSalle- and the Tokyo-Quartet. I had the time of my life, living together with two German guys in a one-bedroom flat, getting up every morning at 6 am to the sounds of either the beginning of Tosca or Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, (the part, where the violins go crazy - God, I am so bad with names, I even forgot what that part is called) in order to start practicing at the practice floor of the Conservatory at 7 am. Read the rest of this entry »

My last concert in Europe this season happened two days ago, playing the Rococo Variations with the Russian National Orchestra under Philippe Auguin in Bad Kissingen, but unfortunately I am not going to some well-deserved family holidays, but while my wife and son are travelling to her mother to Puerto Rico, I am right now on my way to my first visit to Australia and later New Zealand. Actually pretty exciting, but I just find it very sad that I can’t spend the first half of Janos’ summer holidays with him - something I swore myself to avoid, and when the offer came to play during summer on the other half of the world I agreed hoping I could take them with me. I wasn’t aware though that it is winter in New Zealand right now, and since my poor Puerto Rican wife is suffering severely during the German winters, I couldn’t drag her during summer into winter… Read the rest of this entry »