When my manager asked me last year if I wanted to play again with two orchestras in China I immediately agreed without knowing repertoire nor orchestra. Please, don’t judge nor blame me, but I agree to locations when I know that I will be fed well - and in China you can eat gloriously well. It is a different story to anything I have experienced in any Chinese restaurant in the rest of the world. Even the food in the “China Towns” of famous city as New York or San Francisco don’t come close to the quality and variety in China itself. And if I have a chance to travel here comfortably, stay in a nice hotel and play some concerts, even get paid for the spending some time in food-heaven, then who cares what piece I have to play?! I just got back from the most delicious dinner in wonderful company, sitting outside right at a lake, tons of Chinese around us (local food, not hotel food, is superior!), temperature to perfection (maybe 25 Celsius with low humidity, slight breeze) and the food to die for. Read the rest of this entry »

After two very tiring weeks in Sydney and Melbourne I am on my way back home for 24 hours before I jump off to Stuttgart to perform another Haydn D Major with the Stuttgart Philharmonic there. Australia is a very beautiful country indeed with lovely people living in it, and as I mentioned before, the orchestras play on the highest level of excellence. The tiring aspect of it all was that I started far too late to re-learn the Celloconcerto by Mathias Pintscher, which I had to perform (only once) in Melbourne at the Malt House. They are running there two very special weeks of modern music in front of a highly enthusiast and knowledgable audience, and I had another go at that devilishly difficult but very good Pintscher Concerto. But since I always function best with deadlines, I waited until I arrived in Sydney where I played four times the charming but dangerous Saint-Saens Concerto and practised in between the Pintscher - thus not seeing hardly anything from this famous city, except the Opera House, every day, inside out, since the orchestra plays and rehearses there. Read the rest of this entry »

In a couple of hours I am going to play my debut with the Sydney Symphony in the probably most photographed concert hall in the world, the Sydney Opera. Yes, the famous landmark right at the water front, and it does look even more spectacular in real live - and it is huge! I didn’t know that inside this beautiful architecture there is a full opera house plus a concert hall which seats 2700 people, home to the really excellent Sydney Symphony, and I can’t wait to play the fragile but gorgeous 1st Saint-Saens Concerto there tonight (well, concert starts at 8 pm here, which is 12 pm Berlin time, or 6 am NYC, and there is a Bizet-Symphony first) - acoustics in rehearsal were excellent, but it can be always a surprise with people filling the hall. In case you feel like it, this concert will be video streamed in the internet, live and probably also afterwards - the link is in the title, but here it is again: http://www.abc.net.au/classic/

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Yes, I made it finally to Utah after all the trouble with visas and ticket changes - and I was rewarded with the most gorgeous skiing weather you could imagine! My son János came with me and we skied every single day; I was a bit jealous because he got to do it the whole day while I had to dash in and out of Park City into Salt Lake City to rehearse the Dvorak with the Utah Symphony under their chief conductor Keith Lockhart but I must admit that in spite of all the fatherly envy I enjoyed my time with this courageous orchestra which played two beautiful concerts - for free! They donated their salary for the sake of keeping the organisation going, and they really put their pride into the two performances which included two of the great pieces of the last 100 years: Dvorak Cello concerto and Strauss Heroes Life. And while knowing Keith for 15 years now, I have never seen him more inspired and genuine in his music making than this time - he is now conducting without a stick, which in his case I think made his approach somewhat more profound, very interesting. I sat in both second halves to play the Heroes Life in the section, and it was a real joy to play that incredible piece. Read the rest of this entry »

In Mid-February I wrote about my little greencard-theft-desaster and the ensuing trip from hell to the US Consulate in Frankfurt, almost missing my flight etc… Now I seem to be bound to go through exactly the same once more: The greencard, which I “earned” by being married to a Puerto Rican lady with a US passport (well, all Puerto Ricans carry a US passport) was about to expire in September anyway, and since I don’t spend enough days in the US and the center of my life is right now in Berlin, I decided not to attempt to apply for a prolongation but to give it up.

My wonderful US manager Michal Schmidt suggested we’d go with a O-1 Visa (for people with extraodinary abilities - yes, we had to twist some arms to convince the right people…) which would allow me to go in and out of the US without having to apply for a working visa for each concert. The decision was made well over 3 weeks ago, and in order to get it in time we paid $ 1750 to lower the time of the process from 8 months to 2 weeks. This Tuesday the approval arrived at my managers office in New York, she forwarded it via Fedex here to Berlin where it arrived yesterday.

I managed to get an interview at the US Embassy at 7:30 am this morning to have the visa put into my passport. After waiting for almost 2 hours the very nice gentleman told me he couldn’t do anything because the Department for Homeland Security had issued the 0-1 Visa alright, but not posted it onto the internet, which was essential for him to actually put the visa into my passport. He claims the delay is normal, but it means that I would have to wait until Monday afternoon to get the passport back, and our flight (János and me) to Salt Lake City leaves in the morning at 9:50 am. Beside the fact that this morning I almost missed my dress rehearsal (I am playing the 2nd Saint-Saens Concerto with the Konzerthausorchester tonight in Berlin and arrived exactly 9:58 am at the Konzerthaus for the dress at 10 am, stress pure, after racing through Berlin like a madman), I will be late for my duties in Utah (Dvorak with Utah Symphony and skiing with my son and wife - what could be more important than that!!!)…

I am vividly imagining another crazy ride to the aiport on Monday morning: The Embassy grants me the visa plus my passport at 9am in the morning, we jump into a taxi, dash to the airport, arrive there about 25 minutes before departure, and the feeling, once you sit in the aircraft you are supposed to sit in, is absolutely phantastic - I hope it will happen….

But first I will try to do this beautiful Saint-Saens-Concerto justice, it’s a small, but tough cookie, I must admit, and since I don’t have so much experience with it, it’s rather nerve-racking, so I don’t need this visa issues hanging over my head.

Dear readers,

I would like to apologize for having completely misunderstood and misrepresented the following facts: my manager had informed me that the Cleveland Orchestra changed the program for June 2010 and that they weren’t going to need me anymore to perform the Concerto by Matthias Pintscher. I assumed by having recently read articles about how the financial crisis affects US orchestras that this must have something to do with budget cuts of the Cleveland orchestra. This is completely wrong, and neither has the Cleveland orchestra laid off anybody. I apologize sincerely for having written this in my last blog without having gotten my facts straight beforehand (no need to look at the blog, I deleted the wrong part). The reason for the program change is that the focus of the program is now the 10th Anniversary of the Cleveland Orchestra’s young composers’ initiative and will feature ONLY works commissioned as part of this initiative. I also owe apologies to my manager whom I quoted also wrongly; she had never told me that this cancellation had anything to do with budget cuts of the Cleveland Orchestra - we had talked about financial problems of smaller US orchestras because of the crisis and that artists, especially soloists might have to be content with lesser fees or might not even get invited so easily anymore, and in my little brain I had put two and two together (added up as five in my calculation though…) and came up with the wrong assumption.

I am very sorry!

Best wishes,

Alban

One hour ago I was affected for the first time by the financial crisis, but first a little update on what I have been doing since my last scribbling:

After an enjoyable Elgarconcerto in Bonn two weeks ago with Stefan Blunier, a wonderfully original conductor, and his newly acquired orchestra I had a whole week at home to take care of some paper- and office-work while spending some quality time with wife and family.  Read the rest of this entry »

Often I am being asked in interviews how difficult it is to combine the life of an egotistical soloist with having a family (somehow this subject sounds familiar - I must have written about it already; if so, please forgive me for repeating myself!). Last week I lived the perfect example of how easy it can be to combine the two pleasures; my wife attended a seminar in Los Angeles and our son János who had just switched schools refused to stay alone in Berlin during my trip to Oslo (he could have stayed with my father or my sister). The solution was far too tempting for me to turn down: He had to come with me to Oslo. During school time. Why not? He took massive amounts of homework with him, his laptop with online-work to do, and by experiencing a new city the loss of missing three schooldays would be within the limits. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe it is nothing to be especially proud of, but I had a laugh when I realized a couple of months ago that I was going to play within four days with the two resident orchestras of the cities of Birmingham in Alabama as well as the “original” one in the UK. Pure coincidence, I promise, I had nothing to do with it. With both orchestras I have played before, obviously the one in England having the higher profile, but I must admit the Alabama Symphony did also quite a wonderful job with their energetic young British conductor (and pianist) Justin Brown. Read the rest of this entry »

Starting at around 9:30 pm this past Saturday my little streak of bad luck started with me taking a rare run on our treadmill. The only way I can be convinced to run on a thing like that is to watch some TV at the same time. There is no TV in the room with the treadmill, but a ladder, on which I genius-like placed my beautiful Macbook (the silver Apple-laptop) to watch some Seinfeld. 15 minutes into the show some vibration of my feet hammering this running-machine made the ladder tremble and my poor little Mac fell down, screen broken. I don’t mind being unlucky, but if it’s because of my own stupidity, I have a hard time forgiving myself. Read the rest of this entry »