Vibrato - Little Vibrato - No vibrato ???
Sitting in trains allows me to write a bit about my performances I am playing these days. Besides quite a range in repertoire (between Jan 13 and Feb 25 I am playing the concerti by Dutilleux, Strauss, Schumann, Lalo, Haydn D, Saint-Saens No.1+2, Beethoven Triple and Dvorak) I have the rare pleasure of working during the next few days together with one of the the specialist of “authentic baroque-music-playing”, Ton Koopman – on the Haydn Concerto in D Major.But first I would like to write about my experience playing in Helsinki last week, the city which is the cradle of so many wonderful conductors and musicians of today. Yes, I was more nervous than normally, because somehow my respect for these Finns is very high. Two days before travelling north I attended the concert of one of Finnland’s finest, Sakari Oramo conducting Berlin Phil, and his Schumann 2nd Symphony was really one of the most gripping and moving peformances of any Schumann Symphony I have heard so far. The “Sturm und Drang”, which is so omni-present in his music came out beautifully without him overdoing it. In Hannu Lintu I had a similarly intense conductor for the Schumann Concerto in Helsinki and even though I haven’t dared to listen to the live-broadcast yet I felt that it was one of the better performances I have given of that piece.
Dutilleux and Don Quixotte with the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne
On January 31 2005, the 6th birthday of my son Janos, I had the craziest jump-in of my life. At 6 pm on Jan 30 I received a phone call from the Gürzenich Orchestra if I could play the Lalo Concerto at 11 am the next morning. At this moment I had just returned from the ski slopes back to the hotel in Austria, where I spent some days of skiing holidays with my son. I hadn’t played the Lalo for about two years, but since it was one of the first concertos I had ever learned I was confident enough to agree to the gig.
Time flies, and some cellist is getting lazier and lazier
Actually I wanted to write at least a little bit of something after last week’s Brahms Double in Berlin with the RSB, again Marek Janowski and lovely Arabella Steinbacher, especially since it is always very meaning- and also stressfull and special for me to play in my hometown, in “my” hall, the Berliner Philharmonie in which I have heard so many unbelievable concerts, seen the greatest players and conductors, in short: where I received my musical training, at least partly.Thinking of the musicians I have had a chance to hear in there, just to name a few of the real good, dead ones: Vladimir Horowitz, Claudio Arrau (he even kissed me on my forehead :)), Emil Gilels, Pierre Fournier, Paul Tortelier, obviously Mstislav Rostropovich, conductors like H.v.Karajan, Jochum, Giulini and so many others – sooo lucky having grown up in this amazing city with wonderful orchestras performing more or less 10 concerts each week.
Dvorak in Boston
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. I am not a big complainer, but I had moments when I wished I could just stay home and enjoy my life. Tonight was one of the moments which reimbursed me for all the trouble this profession (or calling) brings with it. Playing Dvorak Concerto with Boston Symphony under a conductor like Marek Janowski (for me one of the great living conductors) just pays off anything, and at least on stage the Symphony Hall sounds better than all other halls I have played in – the cello plays more or less on its own. Audience wonderful, very attentive and apreciative at the end, and I must admit, I am really sad that already a third of my time in Boston is over :(
Paris: City of Love and the Arts
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!)..
Being or at least acting important
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.With the last amounts of concentration left, after working hard all day (again I must have played the cello for at least 8 hours including the concert) we pulled off the miracle and played actually really well. I was especially nervous because it was the first time since about 17 years that I was playing a recital with the music in front of me. I had spoilt myself by always knowing the sonatas I was performing by heart, which gave me another authority and view over the piece, at least this is the feeling I have while playing. But for yesterday’s concert there was no chance to re-memorize the Sonatas by Strauss and Reger in half a day, even though I knew them a year ago. The 5th Bachsuite I had to play by memory since the music is all packed in some moving boxes, but the rest of the concert I had to endure looking at the music once in a while. I survived and the concert is history :)
Loosing 3 kilos in 6 days just by recording Prokofiev
When I arrived last night at home in Berlin after having been gone for the week, my roommate 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.We had so-called “Rehearse/Record” sessions, which means not an isolated day of rehearsals for these two 40 minute pieces of which the op.58 is practically unkown (I had never heard nor played it before) but we rehearsed a movement and then jumped into recording it. What I found especially brutal was the fact that the sessions happened each day from 10 am until 3 pm with two, three breaks in which Andrew Litton and me just listened to what we had recorded. After the session I went back to my dressing room to practise another two, three hours the next day’s movements.
"Go home and take a shower!"
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.Why am I writing about this right now? Well, after one of the lesser succesfull quartet recitals of our quartet, Henry Mayer, the second violinist of the LaSalle-Quartet, an Auschwitz survivor with the driest sense of humour, didn’t congratulate us, he only said: “Go home and take a shower!” This was so wonderfully prosaic that we used this saying at many occasions, describing a bit the indifference one tends to feel after having finished or accomplished something, and afterwards, when there wasn’t much else to do, you could just go home and pour some water over yourself, forgetting about the success or the lack of success one just had – it all passes anyway.
Haydn and Prokofiev in Wellington, New Zealand
The infamous Haydn D Major - how come this piece scares every single cellist? It ain't fair, because it doesn't sound difficult, not even remotely so, doesn't look anything, but still we pee our pants before having to play it. This morning in the dress rehearsal I felt as incapable as I hadn't felt in a long time (maybe I shouldn't have watched the Tour de France until 4 am) and lucky enough the saying of "bad dress rehearsal, good concert" worked once again, but still I wasn't completely fulfilled with myself. What to do with this piece of music? Lovely, springlike, fresh, yes, but at the same time so delicate and dangerous, that you just have to watch out and concentrate so much for just playing in tune.
Presidents and Brahms in Ludwigsburg
The other day I was asked by a journalist in a live radio interview about my open and direct writing in my blog. Wasn't I aware that complete strangers would be able to read my deeper thoughts and feelings, and how did that feel? I must admit this question shut me up for more than a month now - maybe it felt a bit like criticism for saying too much, showing too much of myself. My beloved wife herself doesn't agree with me being so indiscreet about myself. Well, let's face it: another cheap excuse for not having written in a long time! :) Even though I did experience many quite wonderful things since my last entry, so maybe there is a bit of truth in me having become a bit insecure about sharing everything. My problem is that I don't have this "privace filter" in my brain. I don't feel the need of privace, I don't really know what it is. I am slowly learning, because it seems women need a lot of that. But for myself I found out that either I write openly, no taboos or secrets, or I don't write at all. Took me a month to figure that one out, and now I am back on (the writing) track.
Elgar With The Hallé Orchestra - Run-Out Concerts
Last time I played the Elgar it was two months ago in the concert which I used as a personal requiem for my mother who had passed away that same day, and in doing that I kind of discovered another intimacy and inwardness in that so often-played piece which made me fall in love with it even more. For me it is now a rather fragile piece, obviously highly emotional, but in a very personal way, not too obvious and "juicy".
Dealing With The Loss
After I wrote my last blog shortly after my mother died, I wasn't sure if so much unfiltered writing is appropriate. But as the rather impulsive person I can be, I decided to stick with what felt right in that moment. When I observe all these very touching comments to this last entry, I realize that it was maybe not appropriate, but for me extremely helpful - it really helped me to go on after this loss which probably can only be "topped" by the loss of your own child. The quintessence what people seemed to aim at and which was not obvious to me, was the fact that my mother lives on in my music.
Conductor - Soloist
The advantage of being a soloist is that we don’t have be away from home for as long as a conductor for the same amount of concerts. When I did my little Hamburg-Göttingen-commute the other day I was gone from home for five days, in which I had five rehearsals and three concerts with two different orchestras, conductors and pieces. Both of the conductors worked for at least the same time each. Why? Very easy: They have to work with the orchestra more or less from scratch, sometimes three, four days of rehearsals, while I come sometimes just the day before the concert for the first rehearsal, play in the morning of the concert a dress rehearsal, concert at night, and, if it ain’t too far from home, I might even drive back after the concert.
Open Your Eyes...
Even though I should be in bed since about one hour, I suddenly felt the urge of starting this silly computer of mine (which I have avoided in the past 10 days!) to take care of some serious business like answering e-mails, paying bills, checking reviews and reading the new blog entries - thanks for them, by the way! Before turning this addiction underneath my fingertips off I decided to write a quick conclusion after these rather exhausting past two weeks with 8 concerts in four cities and two continents, playing a solorecital, Shostakovich 2nd concerto as well as Rococo, Dvorakconcerto and Dvoraks Silent woods while practising as much as possible new stuff.
German Interview before concert in Reutlingen
Sorry, I really liked these questions of a young journalist in Reutlingen, a little city South of Stuttgart. He sent them to me by e-mail and I answered them - I thought he was going to edit them or something, but no, he just printed the entire answers like that without changing a word; I was quite impressed, but too lazy to translate them. By the way: in spite of the jet-lag I played rather good Rococo Variations after 18 hours of travelling straight from Texas to Reutlingen. Yes, sometimes it works, but one has to be careful. Voila, the interview:
Thoughts about Shostakovich and interpretation in Mauritius...
What is a good interpretation? I made some conflicting statements in the past few years in this direction: on the one hand I demand to understand what the composer had in mind when he wrote the music down. I am on the other hand not at all satisfied when I only play what is written in the music, especially since I know from living composers that they expect us musicians to do something more personal than that with their works. This doesn’t mean one should ignore the composers instructions in general, but we have to make them our own so that at the end we can make our own statement with it. But there is a third, more serious problem: listening habits and traditions of interpretation which developed by the consumation of recordings, especially so-called reference recordings.
Lazy Cellist?
Yes, I am very sorry (for not writing in such a long time), and no, I have not been lazy, rather the opposite. Since my last blog entry about a month ago I have been so incredibly busy trying to cope with all the tasks that there was absolutely no time to take care of anything else. What did I do?
Too Many Different Repertoires
For me the most difficult task is to be constantly playing different repertoires. As a musician I believe it is rather healthy not to be playing always the same pieces - it keeps you fresh, keeps you on your toes and keeps you working. But the situation I am experiencing these days isn’t ideal either. Concertos aren’t even the problem, they are rather short (Shostakovich No.1 yesterday took about 25 minutes, I guess), I have played most of them often enough, so this isn’t my main concern.
Sugar and Music
As promised in my previous blog about Schumann in Toronto, going back - again - to these negative reviews which have started to make me think about expression in music, I will try to express my thoughts about it, since I am very much aware of the fact that these are not just some critics believing I am not expressive enough, but also many cellists.
Teaching and Performing in Portland
My good friend Carlos Kalmar, music director of the Oregon Symphony, made me arrive early here in beautiful Portland, as early as I never had to arrive before a performance: three days in advance. And since I was too stressed out with other stuff, I didn't even realize until I got here, that I could have stayed two days longer at home.