My last blog entry came only minutes before I had to rush off to the registry in Berlin Mitte to get married to the love of my life with the beautiful and equally brilliant name Gergana Georgieva Gergova-Gerhardt. So much Ger in Germany, who could come up with anything like it?!

The wedding itself was an unbelievably memorable experience eveb for, as I have been told, our guests (well, they have to say that, I guess, but it sounded surprisingly sincere ). About fourty friends (mainly the ones who had travelled far) and family members had made it to the registry in the early afternoon, and the gentleman who finally married us at around 1:52 pm, stiff as all German officials, gave us some serious advice even though he claimed he wasn’t there to give us any, but as we were surrounded by many of my little nieces and nephews, it had such natural and loving atmosphere that I didn’t even mind that guy. A little reception with a bit of champagne and nibbles followed at the Radialsystem, the place, where I had played all the Bachsuites in July 2010, to kill the time until the departure of a little boat we had chartered to take us on a two and a half hour trip on the Spree River all the way through the center of Berlin to the government district and back, a little sight-seeing tour absolutely worth doing – if it wasn’t for the lousy weather we encountered. A week prior we had almost summer-like temperatures, but on that specific day, March 31 2012, it rained, snowed, and once in a while we even had blue sky and sun, yet freezing cold – a unique experience; at least we got some good photos!

Back at the Radialsystem the party was supposed to start with altogether 80 guests, but my sibblings had not finished the rehearsals for the various performances they had planned. I was a bit nervous because I didn’t know what to expect. My youngest sister Pamina had brilliantly planned the entire wedding, taken all the responsability off our hands, which was such a relief, but as I didn’t want our guests to be pressured into any performances I was afraid that maybe people wouldn’t enjoy themselves, and some geeky little acts would spoil the atmosphere. Far from it. In between the rather delicious appetizers and the main course (unfortunately I forgot the menu) my sister announced the acts, and it couldn’t have been more touching. Somehow singing played the biggest role, maybe because my mother was a singer and couldn’t be there with us?

My rock-musician brother Darius sang a dark and beautiful song composed by my brother-in-law Mathias, a wonderful composer, both performed a self-written melodram together with his two incredibly kids Olga and Elias. Geri’s family together with the two members of her pianotrio played and sang a Bulgarian folksong about the flower Gergana, the two daughters of my sister Manon sang a cute little love song, Ayla accompanying themselves with the guitar, all my siblings with their partners sang a capella a Beatles song I didn’t know, arranged by Mathias, absolutely tear-provokingly touching, and last but not least my friend and pianist Markus Becker, wondering, how it looked in the multi-tasking head of mine, played a quasi improvising piece on the piano by Friedrich Gulda, working into it about 15 different cello titles we had played together – hysterically funny!

There was actually not much time too get nervous for me anyway as I was playing concerts until the day before yesterday with Austrian composer and pianist Thomas Larcher; a friend of mine, Jennifer Wingate, had commissioned a piece by Thomas in memory for her parents which we premiered few days ago in London’s Wigmore Hall together with the Debussy Sonata, Schuberts Arpeggione and Schumann Adagio&Allegro as well as his “5 Stücke im Volkston”. Not an easy program, but it worked very well – took it on tour to Heidelberg (Heidelberger Frühling) and a little more or less private concert in Austrias most gorgeous skiing resort Lech. I drove the 800 km back to Berlin right after the concert, arrived at 3 am in order to hold my beloved future wife’s hand the day before our big day.

And that’s it, my queen is ready, looking glorious (photos will follow) – we have to go now, the ceremony starts in 25 minutes… On May 1st there will be another chance in a beautiful little monastery in Geri’s homecountry Bulgaria (in the Balkan mountains) – and off I go

With Gergana in Chile

Sitting in a train, dashing back from my last concert in order to spend a bit of late-night-time with my son, always gives me the opportunity to get some work done. Answering e-mails, returning calls, or, as rather sedlomly recently, writing my little diary here. I know, I should just translate the monthly blog I am writing for this music magazin “Fonoforum” in German, but this would take much more time than writing something new – at the same time it’s kind of boring writing twice about what happened in the past few weeks which is the reason I have almost stopped posting something here. 

Where shall I start? So many concerts in the past few weeks, and each time a different piece, a real marathon which culminated in the time between Jan 28 and Feb 16, when I played in Antwerpen and Brügge Britten’s gorgeous Cellosymphony with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra under Otto Tausk (last concert a

With Ari Rasilainen and Hyeyoon Park in Hof

radio broadcast, scary with a difficult and rarely played piece like that…), few days later with the excellent Ari Rasilainen Brahms Double in Hof (no, Ari was the conductor, the fiddle was played very well by Hyeyoon Park), me commuting back and fourth the 190 miles between Hof and Berlin to see a bit of János during these busy times, and directly afterwards I recorded in four sessions (what a luxury, thank you, Hyperion!!!) Richard Strauss’ Don Quixotte with the orchestra which premiered the piece many years ago, the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne with their wonderful music director Markus Stenz. The same night I made my way, luckily joined by my very soon to be wife Gergana from Cologne via Frankfurt, Sao Paulo, Santiago de Chile to Frutillar where I had to play both Haydn Concerti with a local chamberorchestra – because of a strike by Air France (who else?!) it took us 29 instead of 22 hours, but there we were in heaven, unfortunately only for three days, returning straight back to Berlin because I had to play the day after the Dvorakconcerto in Nuremberg with the Nürnberg Philharmonic and their new music director Marcus Bosch. I took my little patch-work family with me because it was the end of János’ winter holidays, and to avoid him sitting around at his mother’s watching TV or playing playstation, I thought he would enjoy seeing Nuremberg, listening to some nice Dvorak, watching Star Wars in a 3D cinema, and as little highlight two days of skiing in the beautiful Erzgebirge, right at the Czech border, about 200 miles South of Berlin. Needless to say we had a blast! Geri learned how to ski really well in our little trip to Switzerland over New Year, and now she even managed to do some adorable parallel swings And János is a pro anyway!

Did I mention that I am sitting in a train? Well, it’s my journey back home from my first concert with the orchestra in Cottbus, a small town near the Polish border, not even 100 miles east of Berlin, with the most beautiful little art nouveau opera house I have ever seen. I did Britten again, but even though I have played it three weeks ago, it doesn’t really get much easier I must admit. Especially playing by heart I find it extremely hard and dangerous to get lost. The orchestra did a very good job, except the beginning of the slow movement, when the timpanist played the first two bars in half speed, subsequently lost the conductor Rasmus Baumann. I, waiting for my “cue”, waited for him to finish his introductory notes while the strings came rightfully at the fourth bar… little mishap, doesn’t matter, but I was angry with myself because I couldn’t just ignore the poor lost timpanist and come in when everybody else was coming in. As János wanted to stay with me over the weekend (we are celebrating his 13th birthday a bit belated tomorrow with a big party) I had reserved a taxi for 8:55 pm at the artist entrance to be able to catch my train back to Berlin at 9:02 pm – and I made it!

Why on earth did I go through the pain of travelling 29 hours to Patagonia (South of Chile)for only three days? It’s a long story, but I’ll try to make it short: A good friend of mine, Uli Bader, himself a cellist, Berlin boy like me, same neighbourhood, had not only invited me twice to his orchestra, the National Symphony in Washington of which he was artistic administrator, but had also told other orchestras to take the huge risk and hire me which some of them did.

With Gergana in Frutillar (Chile)

I felt rather grateful, and when he asked me to play at his wedding after leaving the orchestra to marry this wonderful woman who lives in Chile, I agreed to fly there. When I saw what they were doing there, I vowed to come again for the opening of – their hall! Yes, her family, or better, her father had started to build a concert hall right into this huge lake but had died before finishing it. Uli with his drive continued the work of his late father-in-law and together with his wife Nicola they finished this not so little theatre “Teatro del Lago” about 15 months ago. I was supposed to play the Dvorak for the grand opening but because of some misunderstandings I ended up being double-booked at the same time with the Cleveland Orchestra. Uli gracefully understood that this was quite an important concert to cancel so he let me out of my comitment. But since then we were looking for a spot when I could come and play in his concert hall which, as I can truthfully state now, is absolutely gorgeous, acoustically as well as aesthetically. As he also needed a chamberconcert he had hired Gergana’s Trio Imàge which played an excellent concert at the 300-seat amphitheatre, the chambermusic hall with the most unique view in the entire world: behind the scene, through a huge glass wall, you have the full view of this gorgeous lake with it’s 8000 feet snow-covered vulcano on the other side (about 25 miles away). Spectacular, a concert nobody will ever forget! Although we were pretty busy practising and rehearsing, we did manage to eat some amazing food, especially cakes, jump into the lake and take some refreshing walks through the forest there – paradise!

With Markus Stenz after recording of Don Quixotte in Köln

The recording of Don Quixotte before the Chile trip was pretty thrilling for me as I love this piece so much ever since I heard it in my childhood played by the unforgettable Rostropovich. This was his piece, and he set with his bigger-than-life-charisma the tradition of how we see and play the piece today, not always to the benefit of this piece – Don Quixotte was a rather intellectually confused little Spanish nobleman and not a Russian bear. This said I love the way Rostropovich played it, honestly, I still have the entry in my diary of about 30 years ago when I heard it. I was overwhelmed and totally enthused by his performance. But I believe that nobody else should dare to play it like that, because it was his personal conviction, his view of this wonderful work, but a very unique view which should never have become the model of how to play it. And it’s not that he is being copied, but people tend to exaggerate even more until it becomes a caricature. I have no idea if we succeeded in our work, but we did try to cut out some of the misunderstood “traditions”, some of the shmalz and try to get more to the chore of it. Best example is the entire epilog which portrays the beaten Don Quixotte who agreed to become a sheep farmer after loosing the “final battle” against his neighbour who tried to rescue him, but depleted from his confusion he returns home and lies down in his bed “to never get up again” – he is dying, and his life passes before his eyes, incredibly touching and deep, but not really shmalz. Often cellists start the epilog so incredibly slow that they get stuck in the middle and have to speed up once he is actually about to die; they have to inject some energy because they had died too soon.

Or the famous variation with the entire cellogroup – he is waiting in front of his armour to be knighted, thinking about what it means to become a knight, but also about life in general.It’s almost philosophical, but never really kitsch, or that is at least what I believe. The conductor Markus Stenz whom I became very friendly with over the past 7 years shared my view, and I hope we can present a Don Quixotte which is not only well put together (he worked them soooo well), but also breathes the air of La Mancha and is more in the spirit of this Spanish nobleman who had read one too many novels about knights. Recording engineer was, as always when I record for Hyperion, Andrew Keener, whom I will meet again next month when I will sit down and record Britten’s Cellosymphony, another one of Rostropovich’s “property”, and another piece I hope to play rather differently to the greatest performer in the history of the cello.

I am also getting a bit self-conscious as I am normally not aware anybody would be reading the stuff I am writing, but being printed is a different story. The other day my old friend Lars Vogt mentioned that he is enjoying my monthly blog, and the manager of the Soloistes Europeéns, with whom I just played the Saint-Saens and Honegger Concerti, asked me if I could mention the orchestra – gratefully I told him that I would love to if he would take some photos from rehersals. I am supposed to provide photo material to each blog entry, but I am so incredibly lame about taking photos, I constantly forget to do it as you probably can tell from the few photos in this blog. To make a long story short: suddenly having the “job” of writing a column in a real paper made it less fun and less relaxed than it used to be.

At least at our skiing holidays right after Christmas I managed to take some nice shots during the only two nice days in the mountains of Andermatt near Lucerne (Switzerland). Why on earth Switzerland, with the strong Swiss Franc and the not really up-to-date skiing resorts? Well, Geri had a concert in Lucerne and we wanted to connect both her work and our fun. We drove with Janos down there, left her in Lucerne and went ahead for a gorgeous day of skiing, when she joined us the next day for her first experience on ski. We had a blast, the three of us, in our little apartment, one day completely snowed in, no skiing because of the danger of avalanches, so we just played Monopoly and cards all day long. Did I actually mention that this future wife of mine is a great fiddle player? We even played our first concerts together, last month, in Cologne, Frankfurt, at the radio station in Berlin and at a private concert in London, and it was wonderful making music with the person you love. Both of us were a bit afraid beforehand, because sometimes the worst comes out of partners when they start working together, but as both of us have no real ego-problems, we managed to take each others criticism rather well.

Few people know how much it takes to work together in music; you have to be so careful in trying to get the best out of your group, because every wrong word can be taken personally and held against you during the next passage which needs work. At least in Chambermusic everybody criticizes everybody, while in orchestras it is most of the times the conductor who tells everybody else what to do which can easily create such bad blood amongst the musicians that most orchestras have rather strong feelings against their conductors who are not supposed to be criticized openly, or who really don’t accept any kind of criticism, not even suggestions. Would it make a difference if they’d allow and listen to criticism of orchestra musicians? It might weaken their authority, at the same time they’d win the respect of some. The conductor with whom I just played Shostakovich’s First Concerto in Bilbao, said that first and foremost a conductor has to be a psychologist, but even that doesn’t prevent them from often being the most hated subject on stage. Sure, there is jealousy, some musicians think they could do the conductor’s job as well and earn loads of money for such easy task – quite a wrong conception; it is a very, very difficult task, and conductors are far from being overpaid. Sure, for a single concert, a conductor earns more than most musicians in front of them, but there is no job-security for them, there is no money if they are sick, there is a lot of responsability on them, and the fees of the not so famous maestros are really not that high. I am not really interested in discussing fees, but I remember, the one time I talked about money with a conductor, he actually earned less than me, and I was only 25 back then and didn’t receive such good fees. And these poor conductors have to work quite hard – they are constantly studying scores, because every week they have more or less completely different programs to perform while I already moan just because I have nine different concerti to play this month. Ok, true, conductors don’t have to play notes by themselves, they don’t have to be “in shape” with a certain instrument, but they have to be aware of so many notes, they have to know the music so well and be in charge, inspire all these musicians who often loathe them, that I am quite happy doing the work I do, although I have always been curious wether I would be able to conduct. Problem is that I have so much respect for that profession that I would need to study for years and years, and for that I am far too lazy…

A propos lazy: whenever I work it’s not because I am not lazy but because I love playing music and I am being asked certain tasks, like for example recording all works by Benjamin Britten for cello. Not an easy task, and for sure I can’t afford being lazy for that one, and I wasn’t! Between the private duo recital with Geri and right before Christmas I had three days of very hard but succesfull recording sessions at Henry Wood Hall in London, recording the cello-piano sonata by Britten with Steven Osborne as well as the three solo suites. Beautiful music, yes, but partly rather dark which is difficult to repeat in front of a microphone numerous times as each time you have to get yourself into that depressive mood. Luckily Geri stayed with me and we had some lovely meals in the evenings, and Hyperion treated us extremely well during the sessions with catered meals and as always the best recording engineers the world has to offer!

Right now I am on my way back from Bilbao, having missed my very first connection this winter, and not even due to weather but some fuelling problems in Bilbao which delayed the flight into Munich. I ran for my connection with little success – instead I started writing this blog in the lounge (what’s new…!). The first concert of the year took place in Swansea which I visited now for the sixth time in the last 8 years, playing the Lalo Concerto with Olari Elts and the National Orchestra of Wales (BBC) – not an easy start into the year, as I respect that piece as one of the most difficult to play; it seems to be rather easy, but wait until you play it with orchestra, you will realize it is very, very tiring to play, because the cello has hardly any rest, constantly playing in the middle register which demands a lot of articulation from the left hand and lot of power from the bow arm in order to project against a big orchestra. It is a charming work but not easy to shape. The lovely second subject should be played in tempo but also demands a certain tranquillo character, difficult to achieve, and the quick passages are some finger twisting uneffective exercises I could easily live without.

After the concert I had to drive the 180 miles back to Heathrow Airport which shouldn’t have taken more than two and half hours if it wasn’t for a closed M4 (the highway) – the detour I had to take was awful and I arrived at the airport hotel at 2.30 am, having to take an early flight to Luxembourg for my rehearsal there with the Saint-Saens and Honegger Concerti. Five hours sleep didn’t really help for a difficult rehearsal; Saint-Saens wasn’t the problem, as I have played this piece almost 60 times in my life, but gorgeous Honegger Concerto was quite a challenge as it was the second time I had to perform it in public after the recording I did a couple of years ago. Either it is age or my brain is filled up with too many notes already, but it appears to me that I am learning and re-learning piece more slowly than ever before. My friend, conductor Christoph König, advised me after our concert in Luxembourg with the excellent Soloistes Europeéns not to do too much because he had seen me struggle through that first rehearsal. The concert went well, at least according to audience reaction and reviews, but I can easily live without the stress of getting lost in a piece I haven’t spent hundreds of hours with.

Well, this is a bit the problem we are facing: either we stick to the known repertoire, like the Shostakovich in Bilbao, which I really can play in my sleep by now (after 50 performances of a work it is really not only in your fingers, but in stomach, heart, brain, every fiber of your being, I guess), but then we mustn’t complain that the same pieces are being played over and over again. Or we take the risk and say “yes” to pieces which aren’t being played so much – but this will automatically be more “dangerous” as we don’t have the same routine and safety net as with the more “common” concerti. I prefer living on the risky side of life instead of being safe, but please, let me complain from time to time about how scared I am  about getting lost in pieces I don’t know soooo well yet, like next weekend in Antwerp the Cellosymphony by Benjamin Britten…

I don’t listen to music outside of a concert hall. I love going to concerts and listen to all different kind of music (opera, orchestra, chambermusic, jazz, experimental, you name it), but the older I get the less I am intrigued to listening to canned recordings. When listening to music I need to have the live atmosphere, I want to see the creation in process, not some pre-made product. Indeed I live in a very lucky place, Berlin, where we have tons of live music every day, dozens of concerts to choose from, three opera houses, jazz-clubs, other clubs, and I am spoilt by having that chance, I admit. I do own quite many LP’s, mainly piano music, loved Horowitz and Dinu Lipatti while growing up, but I haven’t even replaced the needle on my excellent LP-player when it broke four years ago.
Although I own a little ipod, I have no music on it whatsoever, just audio books which I listen to while jogging. I don’t need a constant stream of music draining out the last bit of thoughts I might be having – and I do think better when there is no musical distraction around me, and I love to be alone with my thoughts, don’t need any kind of background noise for it. What I am listening to in the moment? The Silent House by Orhan Pamuk

Six performances of Prokofiev’s Cellosymphony within four weeks, last month in Stuttgart two with Thomas Dausgaard and the Radio Orchestra there, and four here in Portland with my good friend Carlos Kalmar and his excellent “band”. Few years ago I had recorded that piece, and getting a chance to play it several times in a row is rather exciting – the more I play it the more I love it, a clear sign of a good piece. Already the performances in Stuttgart were fulfilling, I felt I had played better than on the recording, more passionate, more emotional, and technically not too bad either, except the fact that I broke another A-string as I did during the Shostakovich few weeks before that at the cellofestival in Kronberg. Each time it was with radio broadcast, and each time I felt that I didn’t want to bore the audience by me disappearing to change the string, so I took the principal cellist’s instrument and continued. For the Shostakovich I had only 2 more minutes to go, so it made great sense to do so, even though the cello wasn’t any good, but for the Prokofiev I hated myself for having done the same as the mishap took place during the second movement, and I still had about 20 minutes to play quite many notes…

I survived and audiences seem to like when these things happen – besides that I don’t mind making a point that at the end of the day the instrument doesn’t matter so much, that you can get something out of every cello. A good cello is helpful, it inspires you to do better, but at the same time a bad cello can challenge you to work harder which is not a bad side-effect. As I had mentioned in my previous blog which I wrote on my way from Manchester to Kronberg, I had great respect playing there and more so teaching in front of a very knowledgeable crowd, and while the playing was alright, my teaching was really sub-par. Funny, when I get nervous it doesn’t affect my playing much except that the vibrato is getting a bit faster, but for teaching it really has a negative affect. Why? Because I have far more experience performing under pressure than teaching some talented young people in front of an audience which has high expectations.

When I teach my goal is to make the student a better musician or cellist (well, everybody is trying that, I guess…), but to do so in front of 200 people in one hour is a difficult task. I try to forget that anybody is watching, try to focus completely on my victim, but in retrospective I must admit that I failed miserably, partly also because I have very little experience giving a masterclass to advanced students. I’ll keep on learning, and maybe next time not in front of an audience…

Overall I had a wonderful time in Kronberg, met many colleagues, old and young, great and greater, and as all cellists, very kind. Yes, we all get along, which is quite amazing; maybe it is because we play an instrument which resembles the human voice, that we are and behave actually human after all.

The most frightening experience there wasn’t the teaching but performing in front of colleagues and two very meaningful widows: the widow of my late teacher Boris Pergamenschikow who housed me during my first big competition in Bonn, and the widow of everybody’s beloved Pablo Casals. These two ladies, Tanja and Marthita, scared the hell out of me, because I can only start imagining how strong their opinions must be concerning other cellists….

In between Portland and Stuttgart I hopped over to Mexico City to play another Shostakovich No.1 in the beautiful Bellas Artes with the National Orchestra under their chief Carlos Miguel Prieto, and right after I had the pleasure of being the first “victim” of horn-player Sarah Willis from Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra: because she interviewed some uninterviewable musicians for Berlin Phil’s digital concert hall rather brilliantly, one of the producers, Daniel Finkernagel, offered her a TV-cooking show which will be called “Prelude & Food”.

There are enough cooking shows around, I know, but in this case the guests will be all musicians, and that’s a new one. I brought two friends, so-called side-kicks, even though one of them was rather a “main-kick”, actor Christian Berkel who did it in dedication for his mother who adored classical music. I was cooking some Musaka (for the first time in my life, but what can I do, when asked a month before for a recipe, and I normally cook just whatever the fridge has to offer…) while trying to talk about music and outreach activities, playing cello in between – not an easy task when cameras are pointing at you at the same time, and you are supposed to be funny but a serious musician. She was wonderful and we would have had a blast if it wasn’t for the fact that I found out at the end of the show that my beloved US manager Michal Schmidt had just died the day before.

She was one of the warmest, smartest and best educated people in the business, respected by musicians, colleagues and orchestras equally, and she lived only for 54 years, sad and tragic her passing. For her it was all about music and the musicians, money always came last. Sometimes she called me to convince me about the quality of a smaller orchestra and that they would treat me very well, but that they had very little money. Most of her colleagues might not even tell the artists about it but turn it down, but she cared for the survival of classical music and didn’t play the game of pushing the fees higher and higher until the whole system collapses. Not being old at all she was definitely old-school, very private but soooo caring. I miss her horribly.

As Dr.Hauber is not only a doctor but also a collector of string instruments, which he loans  students more or less for free, as well as a benefit-concert organizer, this call luckily had nothing to do with János but the unusual request of forwarding my cellphone number to the office of the German president  who was looking for a cellist to play at a state dinner honoring the Turkish president. Why him? Well, some doctors have good connections A few minutes later I was called by the president’s office in form of a very nice man who invited me for a nominal fee to perform two pieces of five minutes the day after my arrival from my five-week Australian tour. Since I don’t suffer jet-lag much I agreed to do it under such rather strenuous circumstances, also, as the gentleman pointed out, for the pure honor to play for the president. Further details we fixed later in some e-mails, especially the repertoire (Prelude of the Sixth Bachsuite and the last movement of Mozart’s G major duo for violin and viola, arranged for cello, with Geri, who by the way is an amazing violinist).

Geri and me worked the Mozart Duo with great detail and dedication the morning after my arrival (I had an early start anyway, as my son Janos had to be prepared for school), and after a couple of hours of desk work (tons of mail after 5 weeks “off”) we drove to “Schloss Bellevue”, the residence of the German president in Berlin. We arrived there shortly before 7 pm, hundreds of soldiers already awaiting the Turkish president with torches in front of the castle while we made our way through the back entrance. Unfortunately there had been a bomb threat that afternoon which delayed the whole evening for about two hours. When guests were getting a bit nervous, I was called from our dressing room to play already something ad hoc. Trying to be a good sport I sat down in the big dining hall and started playing the first Bachsuite – with absolutely no effect; people didn’t even seem to notice me at all.

It felt rather humiliating and very embarrassing, and I am still upset with myself that I didn’t behave more “divaesque” and stopped playing after the first movement. But maybe I believed so much in the power of Bach’s music that I wanted to give them a chance to settle and come down – no chance! They continued chatting, laughing, moving around, though I played until the end and left, unnoticed. To my horror, when it came to my official first “set”, the Prelude of the sixth Suite, all printed in the evening program, with biography and everything, the attention was equally non-existing; nobody bothered to listen, and again I left with no applause, maybe the way how musicians used to be received three hundred years ago. I was promised that for the Mozart Duo it would be better (played before the dessert was served), to no effect; even the beauty of my fiancée could not change this disastrous reception of the political and economical elite of Germany and Turkey.

Our president I never met that evening, which was only for the better, because I was so angry, I might not have been on my best behavior; I just saw all to clearly the sad irony, that the president of the country which prides itself so much of its culture, doesn’t mind waiting on an airport runway for some second-rate pop-starlet to leave her plane after returning from the Eurovision Song Contest, a highly embarrassing display of pop culture in Europe, while when hiring one of Germany’s more succesful cello soloists to his own place, he not only ignores him completely but also let’s him dine at the staff’s table. Oh no, I have no ego problem, I am not a diva at all (if I was I would not even have started playing under such circumstances), but this was not only disrespect to us as musicians, but much worse to Bach and Mozart.

20 years ago I had played for our former president Richard von Weizsäcker, a highly cultured man who went to concerts frequently in Berlin, and after the residence concert he took  his time to talk to me about music, never mind my youth and utter unimportance. Now, twenty years later, same place, different president, what a disappointment… At least I had some healing experience by visting a few days later a school in Berlin-Neukölln, a district with a high percentage of kids with migration background. Oh, these children listened so extremely well, you could see the surprise in their faces when hearing for their first time a suite by J.S. Bach, never mind what their cultural background was. Their questions were well thought of and the 90 minutes of play and talk went by like nothing. And these are the kids our politicians are worried of loosing? I have great respect for politicians, it’s a tough job, I wouldn’t want it; but one thing is for sure: these twelve year olds were by far better listeners than their own president and his high profile guests!

Right now I am on my way back from Nottingham to Manchester after having played a Dvorak Concerto with Britain’s oldest orchestra, the marvelous Hallé Orchestra under André de Ridder. It wasn’t an easy performance, as they never are, these so-called “run outs”. We rehearsed yesterday afternoon in Manchester, drove today the two and a half hours to Nottingham, did a full dress rehearsal at 3:30 pm, then a quick dinner, pre-concert talk and performance at 7:30. I was facing a special handicap in form of my cello, or rather its new bridge. Already in Sydney my bridge was too low, and I had one not so great one made there (too thick, and also too low, what a waste of money!), so after I got back to Berlin I handed my cello over to my luthier who made a specially high bridge, just in case. What does it mean? Well, the bridge is the thing which holds the strings up, standing on the top of the cello between the two f-holes. If it’s too low, the strings will hit the fingerboard and start buzzing, as soon as we put too much pressure. If it’s too high, we need much more energy and strength to push the strings down and the cello might sound too tight.

Lazy me, having played on rather low strings for the past few years, suddenly had to work much harder, but I think the cello sounded better because of it – more brilliance and maybe even more sound, yet definitely more suffering from my part; my fingertips still hurt writing these words here. Good concert otherwise, very beautiful second half with Ravel and Debussy (La Mer), unfortunately without me in the section, because they didn’t have any spare parts…

Tomorrow I am off back to Germany, performing and teaching for the first time in my life at the prestigious Cello Festival in a city near Frankfurt called Kronberg. Interesting to play for people who care so much for the cello; critical audience but knowledgeable I guess – we’ll see. The masterclass is tomorrow, rather short, two hours I reckon, and on Sunday I play Shostakovich’s First Concerto again, with the Kremerata Baltica – always fun to do that piece with a chamber orchestra, as they tend to be the most flexible and exciting.

While I can’t wait to finally come home and spend some free days with my loved ones, yesterday I felt more than just love for music, I felt a much deeper urgency, felt the essential need to share whatever the driving force behind Shostakovich’s music is. Maybe I was just tired, maybe it was the pressure of a live-radio broadcast with the possibility of my fiancée actually listening on the internet (I have most respect for her musical opinion…), but it was one of those concerts where things didn’t go smoothly, where it felt more like life and death than trying to get to the perfect performance. For the orchestra it was a special occasion: after concerts in Hobart and Launceston they took their program for the first time to the absolutely gorgeous Melbourne Recital Center, and together with their conductor Sebastian Lang-Lessing they provided the energy and flexibility needed to bring such a piece to life.

I struggled brutally through the last few minutes of the last movement, grabbing the bow with my fist in order not to drop throughout the last two pages, and when it came to our prepared encore (Silent Woods by Dvorak) I had to change bowings because my right arm was too exhausted to keep the bow steady on the string in these long gorgeous lines. On top of everything my endpin slipped in the second bar and I could not find another hole for the next few minutes as this is a very soft, delicate and legato piece and I didn’t want to interrupt the lines.

Oh, I was sweating and cursing myself for not having sharpened the endpin, but at the end of the day this all doesn’t matter – once a performance is done, it is old news, it’s over with, and all we can try is to see every single concert as the possibly last one and enjoy the beauty and enchanting quality of music in a live performance venue, value the fact that we still have such thing as a concert; people could just listen and watch at home, but they keep on looking for this special difference of attending a concert versus watching it on DVD or youtube. Balance, perfection and view is definitely better on TV, but the so-called special moments, when the aura of performers and audience start mixing, this you only can experience by being part of it, either on stage or in the audience.

Eight hours lay-over in Bangkok are the price I am paying for dashing off right after my last note to the airport, grabbing the first flight out which means that I will arrive home in the arms of my beautiful wife-to-be about 34 hours after I played my very last note. After the Brahms Double Concerto in Sydney I had spent a week in Melbourne as I had mentioned in my previous blog, then I went to beautiful Perth and Adelaide to play four times the first concerto by Camille Saint-Saens before travelling to Tasmania to play with this small but very exciting group of people, the Tasmania Symphony. Oh, Perth and Adelaide were good fun, too. I enjoyed immensely working with Asher Fisch in Perth, especially his interpretation of the Franck-Symphony in the second half, which I was allowed to perform as well, was very convincing. In between I gave myself the pleasure of spending a day bicycling on Rottnest Island, a dreamlike little place off the coast of Perth – it suddenly felt like holidays again, just without the pleasure of  sharing it with my partner.

Since I am with growing age getting more and more interested in finding ways how to explain music and celloplaying to students, I took every single teaching opportunity, gave masterclasses in Perth, Adelaide and also in the last few days in Melbourne, even coaching an old friend from university. Oh, teaching is so much harder and more tiring than performing, because you have to constantly challenge your own believes in order to give justice to the person in front of you, trying to understand what he is driving at and if the way I feel is really valid enough to change somebody else’s view.

I never had a teaching position, never had any students on a regular basis, but the older I get the more I am tempted and interested in conveying how I think cello should be played. Maybe I am just incredibly old-fashioned, but I love the way how older generations didn’t seem to worry so much about “projection” but much rather about quality of sound, beauty and honesty of expression, which is all serving the musical language, not destroying it. In all these masterclasses and lessons of the past few weeks it came always down to the right arm and the use of the bow. As the bow makes the music, far more time has to be spent on working out where on the string with what speed and how much pressure we want to pull the bow while trying to phrase, articulate, breath and sing with it.

It looks as easy as anything, but it is very, very hard, and while I have never actually stopped thinking and working my bowarm after I attended a masterclass of Pinchas Zukerman in the summer of 1989 at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago in which he focused on the importance of the bowarm, I come to realize that this is incredibly hard to explain to students. In order to project better, modern cellists often choose a rather quick bow-speed, moving the bow closer to the fingerboard than the bridge. If you compare it to older generations, they move the bow considerably closer to the bridge with lesser speed, which gives the sound more overtones and depth, but less “sound cloud” as I like to call it. Maybe the modern way is louder, I don’t know and I don’t really care, because for me it becomes less personal and more “pauschal” as we would say in German, general, flat.

The challenge I find is to combine the variety of different bow speeds with playing nearer the bridge, at the same time managing going “in and out” of the string. Instead of “ironing” the sound by scratching near the bridge, it is crucial to find a way to not stay deep inside the string with the bow all the time, but in order to get the sound to still breathe we have to be able to release in chosen moments. While it is hard to explain in a lesson, it is even harder to write about it. Maybe this sounds all very technical, but without thinking and working on this, making music is so much harder. And while it is much  more fun to talk about and teach music, it is fruitless if the particular student has not spent sufficient time in working out what to do with the bow…

Before boarding the next 12-hour flight to Munich I will sleep a bit now in this crowded Thai-Air Lounge in order to avoid jetlag, because 20 hours after my arrival I will have the honour of playing for the German and the Turkish presidents at some state dinner in Schloss Bellevue (the president’s residence), and maybe it wouldn’t look so good if I was the one falling asleep in my own performance. Oops, I hope it is not a black-tie thingy, because I don’t have stuff like that….

Mein Vater hat mir als Kind immer wieder gepredigt wie wichtig es ist, nicht nur regelmäßig zu üben, sondern ganz bewußt die “Batterien” wieder aufzuladen. Von Natur aus faul ist mir dies nie schwer gefallen; ohne Gewissensbisse habe ich es auch dieses Jahr wieder geschafft, nach meinem letzten Konzert am 15.Juli in den USA mein Instrument nach meiner Rückkehr in Berlin für vier Wochen nicht anzurühren. Zunächst übergab ich mein 300 Jahre altes Goffriller-Cello meiner Geigenbauerin zur jährlichen Wartung (der Hals war etwas lose…) und verbrachte dann mit meiner Verlobten drei Wochen in ihrer wunderschönen Heimat Bulgarien, am Schwarzen Meer, ihrer Geburtstadt Pleven sowie in den Bergen des Balkan und Rilagebirges. Eine Woche verging allerdings, bis die regelmäßigen Albträume (Flugzeug verpassen, Blackouts auf der Bühne, Verlust des Instruments oder einfach ein Stück spielen zu müssen, das man gar nicht kennt) sich einstellten. Erst in Augenblicken der Entspannung merke ich, wie stressig das Leben als freischaffender Musiker ist.
Bei meiner Rückkehr aus den verdienten Ferien war mein Cello zum Glück noch nicht fertig, was mir noch ein paar freie Tage mit meinem aus Puerto Rico zurückgekehrten Sohn bescherte. Problem vieler Musiker ist es allerdings, nach längerer Pause wieder in Form zu kommen; dank ausgeklügelter Fingerübungen reichte es mir glücklicherweise, mein Instrument zwei Tage vor meinem Abflug nach Australien zu beharken – allein die Hornhaut hatte sich so stark zurückgebildet, dass ich mich durch ein bissel Schmerz durchbeissen musste.

Um wenigstens eine Woche zuhause verbringen zu können, hatte ich beinahe um jeden Tag mit den Verantwortlichen vom Sydney Symphony Orchestra gefeilscht, die mich am liebsten drei Tage vor der ersten Probe vorort haben wollten. Da ich seit 18 Jahren zwischen Kontinenten pendele, habe ich nie Probleme mit Jetlag und konnte mich schlußendlich durchsetzen, erst am Abend vor der ersten Probe in dieser eindrucksvollen Stadt landen zu müssen. Fünf Wochen Australien – zu lange für meinen Geschmack, doch da die Flugkosten insbesondere für einen Cellisten (Cello erfordert einen eigenen Sitzplatz) sehr hoch sind, tun sich oft mehrere Orchester zusammen, um die Kosten untereinander auf zu teilen.

Erster Stop: Brahms Doppelkonzert mit dem 36jährigen Vasily Petrenko am Pult und der noch jüngeren Karen Gomyo an der Geige in der großartigen Sydney Opera. Ein schönes Erlebnis, doch auch die 7.Sinfonie von Schostakowitsch, die ich am dritten Abend neben der Solocellistin mitspielen durfte, war eine willkommene Herausforderung nach der langen Spielpause. Da mein Vater fast 45 Jahre Mitglied der Berliner Philharmoniker war, bin ich tief in meinem Herzen Orchestermusiker und ergreife jede Möglichkeit, die sich mir bietet, die symphonischen Werke nach der Pause mit zu spielen, wenn es Dirigent und Cellogruppe erlaubt; normalerweise schön versteckt ganz hinten, direkt vor dem Blech, allein wollte mich die Gruppe dieses Mal vorne schwitzen sehen. Bei diesem Konzert wurde mir plötzlich bewußt, dass die Zeit nicht anhält: sonst war ich immer einer “jungen Musiker”, und mittlerweile sind selbst die Dirigenten jünger als ich.

Die zweite Woche verbrachte ich an der Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) in Melbourne. Nachdem ich mich mit einem halben Recital am ersten Tag musikalisch vorgestellt hatte, habe ich eine Masterclass gegeben, zehn weiteren Cellostudenten Einzelunterricht erteilt, öffentlich über das Erlernen neuer Werke diskutiert,
und zum Abschluss nach drei Tagen intensivster Probenarbeit mit Studenten des Instituts Brahms’ wundervolles Klavierquartett in c-moll quasi als “Spielertrainer” gespielt. Für mich eine ganz neue Erfahrung, da ich Kammermusik zwar schon unterrichtet hatte, aber noch nie als Lehrer auch Teil der Gruppe war. Gemeinsames Musizieren bedeutet für mich nicht, dass einer den anderen erzählt, wie interpretiert werden soll, sondern man erarbeitet gemeinsam ein bestimmtes Werk. Nur in diesem speziellen Falle haben die drei jungen Männer der Gruppe von mir Weisheiten über Interpretation und Zusammenspiel erwartet. Ja, die Verantwortung wiegt schwer, der nächsten Generation zu erzählen, wie man zu spielen hat, wenn doch so viele Wege nach Rom führen und man selber nicht sicher ist, welches der Beste ist…

Und so viel sei gesagt: Es war ein großartiges father-son-bonding, wie die Amerikaner sagen würden. Wir beide verbrachten drei intensive und wunderschöne Wochen miteinander. Sofort an seinem ersten Ferientag flogen wir zum Bachfestival nach Eugene, der Stadt der amerikanischen Leichtathletik (“Nike” wurde dort geboren), aber dank Helmut Rilling auch seit 40 Jahren (!) mit einem internationalen Musikfestival ausgestattet. Ich hatte János gewarnt, dass die ersten fünf Tage etwas hart werden würden; in drei Konzerten musste ich nicht nur alle sechs Bachfestivalchsuiten sondern auch noch Benjamin Brittens drei Solosuiten aufführen.

Warum ich so etwas Anstrengendes für die Ferien zugesagt hatte? Oh, ich liebe Herausforderungen, und da ich Britten’s Gesamtwerk im Dezember ohnehin aufnehmen werde, war es mir darüber hinaus ganz recht, auch die letzten beiden Suiten lernen zu müssen. Selten war ich so nervös, da für mich nichts heikler ist, als Bach zu spielen, und auch Britten’s Musik spielt sich nicht von alleine, insbesondere wenn man wie ich lieber auswendig als von Noten spielt… Bis zur letzten Minute war ich damit beschäftigt, die Suiten in meinen Kopf zu bringen, während János mit den Kindern eines befreundeten Dirigenten angelte und im Hotelpool tobte.

Wie verdient fühlten sich die fünf Tage Freizeit an nach bestandenem vierstündigen Bach-Britten-Marathon an, und wie viel kann man in so kurzer Zeit in Oregon erleben. Mit je einem ATV (Mini-Jeep) düsten wir die spektakulären Dünen an der Pazifikküste rauf und runter, schauten uns Seelöwen in ihren Höhlen an, fuhren an schneebedeckten Bergen vorbei, durch tiefschwarze Wälder direkt in wüstenähnliche Landschaften, und der Höhepunkt waren drei verschiedene Flüsse, auf denen wir uns im White-Water-Rafting erproben konnten.

Da ich nun schon fast ein Vierteljahrhundert professionell Konzerte gebe, kenne ich sowohl meinen Körper als auch die noch wichtigeren Finger gut genug um zu wissen, dass ich es mir leisten konnte, eine Woche lang das Cello nicht anzurühren, um dann innerhalb von 90 Minuten fit genug für die erste Probe mit Saint-Saens 1.Cellokonzert in Nashville zu sein. Ach, so viel leichter ist es, 19 Minuten Saint-Saens als 240 Minuten Bach und Britten erfolgreich zu gestalten; in Eugene hätte ich es mir nicht erlaubt, am Tage des zweiten Konzertes auf einer gemieteten Harley-Davidson mit János eine kleine, zauberhafte Landstrasse für ein paar Stunden entlang zu gondeln. Die Idee kam vom Präsident des Orchesters, und wie könnte ich so ein Angebot ausschlagen. Ob ich meine Konzerte zu locker nehme? Nein, ganz und gar nicht, nur reichen mir mittlerweile 15 Minuten Schlaf, 10 Minuten Dusche und 40 Minuten hochkonzentriertes Einspielen vor dem Konzert, um ein Werk, das ich insgesamt schon mehr als hundert Mal gespielt habe, überzeugend über die Rampe zu bringen.

Der Besuch einer Country-Musik-Bar mit köstlichen BBQ-Spare-Ribs rundete unseren Besuch in Tennessee ab, bevor uns das Ende der Reise in New York erwartete; in einem Ford-Mustang-Cabriolet cruisten wir durch den Big Apple, schwitzten und staunten für Stunden beim Sightseeing, umkreisten Manhattan in einem Boot, machten den letzten kleinen Abstecher (380 Meilen) nach Chautauqua, wo ich mein letztes Konzert der Saison mit einem wirklich hervorragenden Sommerorchester bestreiten durfte (ein letztes Mal Saint-Saens) und dann setzte ich mit schwerem Herzen Janos in den Flieger in Richtung Puerto Rico zu seiner Mutter, während ich einem Strandurlaub mit meiner Zukünftigen in Bulgarien entgegen fieberte.