Teaching and playing in Madrid and Washington
Time flies, it is unbelievable - I had to get up this morning at 5:30 am in order to catch my flight back to the US at 6:50 (this is only possible in Berlin, since we have this lovely little city airport Tegel) which just has been cancelled, and it was already getting light when I was leaving my apartment at 5:50 am. Yes, it's spring, and lazy me hasn't written anything in here since a while. No, I wasn't that busy, but I took a very welcome little break, skiing with my little family in Switzerland.
Oh, we had the best time, and while my friend Paul who visited us in Flims in our cozy holiday apartment, I even had the pleasure of taking over the last of his three personal ski-instructor lesson. It was the first time since 30 years that I had somebody tell me how to ski, and it was so worth it. The teacher taught me in this 60 highly motivated minutes how to go down mogles (Buckelpiste), and something I have always been afraid is now the greatest fun on the slope. Thanks Ursina! :)
Before that I had been going a bit nuts, that's true, being away from home just a bit too much for my taste, but for the first time I decided to fly my family for an extended weekend into one of Europe's most beautiful cities: Madrid. I played two concerts there with the RTVE Orchestra, and they came for the last concert on Friday just to stay until Sunday, and finally, finally I got to see something from the place I was visiting (I am a bad tourist when I am on tour, mainly staying in the hotel, practising or working on the computer, how boring). We didn't do anything special, just getting the city to know by walking all over town (we had glorious weather) and spending a couple of hours at the Picasso exhibition at the Reina Sophia museum.The concerts there were with Walter Weller, the Sinfonia Concertante by Prokofiev was my welcome "victim" since I had played it already five times in January. How easy it becomes when the repertoire is not changing every week.
A week later I played the same in Washington, and I never felt as comfortable with this big piece ever before. Conductor there was Hans Graf who had conducted my very first professional concert 19 years ago. Wow, almost 20 years of playing concerts in public, that is a long time I must admit, time to retire... :)
And in both cities I also had to teach, something I refuse to do on a regular base since I am not ready to take the responsability for even a single student depending on me to lead him to a job. But a masterclass here and there? I love it, it's so interesting to face different students with different problems and trying to come up with some help within 45 minutes, sometimes very general things, sometimes incredibly specific - oh, it is soooo easy compared to regular teaching, where you have to insist and insist, repeat the same things over, nobody applauding you for it - I admire great teachers.My father is one of them, he loves teaching, and he is so good at it, rather unbelievable - since more or less 50 years he is teaching now, and he does it with the same passion and dedication as he commits to his orchestra job, a real idol.
Last night we had dinner with him after not having seen him more or less since the funeral of my mother, and it was touching to see him sit there and talk about his future alone. I wish so much that he falls in love with a wonderful woman and starts a new life - he hinted that he had some ideas, but it can't be easy after loosing the person you have been with for 44 years...Anyway, now I will have to go to my departure gate to get to Birmingham, Alabama (still in Berlin), and in the plane I will have to do some good praying that I can memorize the Barber Concerto, since I haven't done that in a while, and I feel I am getting older, my brain doesn't pick up the pieces as quickly as it used to. Age, what can one do, but I love it, it's so nice not being "young" anymore, with all its little problems coming with it. Well, actually, I am in less physical pain than as a 21 year old, but therefor the brain ain't as quick anymore...