Discipline
While sitting in the lounge of the Chicago O'Hare airport I have some time to think about the past few days in Fort Worth. I was playing three times the Brahms Double Concerto together with Augustin Hadelich, the Fort Worth Symphony and their chief conductor Miguel Hardt-Bedoya. And except the last performance which took place this afternoon I was not really happy with myself, which was even more regrettable since the orchestra and especially Augustin played real well.
What happened? Oh, nothing bad, we had good performances and a good success, but besides the fact that I missed a couple of notes in the first two notes, I just didn't feel on top of "the game", didn't feel as creative as I like to feel, and unfortunately it was entirely my fault; in order to overcome jetlag I have to be very disciplined with the amount of sleep I am getting, and I wasn't. I just didn't feel like turning off the computer/TV/light at night, but then didn't manage to at least sleep in, but woke up every morning at 8 am.
On top of that I was practicing during the day quite a lot the Pintscher and Schönberg concerti which I have to learn by next month, so in order to keep the focus on the Brahms I should have been much clearer in my head. Sure, I can't help the fact that I have to practice many other pieces on the days of concerts, but at least I should have the discipline to go to bed early enough in order to have enough to give during a concert, which wasn't the case. Today I slept in, practiced a bit and felt a whole lot better during the performance, even though 2 pm is not my favorite time to start a concert.
Now I am on my way to Frankfurt, where I will arrive at 1:15pm. A train will hopefully get me to Reutlingen (South of Stuttgart) at 4:15 pm, at 6 pm I have a rehearsal for Rococo Variations and Andante cantabile (also by Tchaikovsky), and the concert will start two hours after that - ojwej, that will hurt so bad. Whoever knows how the fingers feel after an intercontinental flight especially travelling East will feel with me. I just hope that I will survive this concert...And from now on I promise I will be tough on myself and retire early enough to avoid boring concerts!