After not touching my cello for 18 days after the last concert of the season (the Chin premier in London) I started practising again on August 31 for my concerts in Mexico with the Orquesta Nacional under Carlos Miguel Prieto. The break definitely had a cleansing effect – after a couple of hours of warm-up I felt very comfortable with both the Schumann and the Haydn D major Concerto and was looking forward to go on tour again. Two days had to be enough before I started my first trip of the new season to the country of my brother-in-law, Mexico. Long flight, but, and maybe that’s a sign of good luck for this season, Lufthansa upgraded me (as a frequent traveller) without even telling me – I just ended up in Business class which for a 12-hour flight is heaven! (and takes care of jet-lag)

About 30 years ago, we spent another Easter holiday in Salzburg where my father as member of Berlin Philharmonic had to play under Karajan during the Festspiele, I heard as a 10-year-old for the first time in my life the young Krzystian Zimmermann. Karajan had introduced him to his sponsors (after a so-called “Förderer-Probe”) as his own discovery, and I managed to experience the g-minor Ballade by Chopin after having practised my own little children piece (Gavotte by Prokofiev) in a one of the warm-up rooms, where I secretly used to practise. This was an absolute eye- and ear-opener, I fell in love with the piece and forced my piano teacher back in Berlin that I HAD to learn this piece.

Well, it took a couple of weeks until my teacher gave in (I’m not only since yesterday very stubborn); fact is that I had no technique or basic training to tackle a piece like that. Manually I wasn’t very talented as a young boy, and it was only due to an enormous patience and will that I managed to play this piece of music at the Steinway-Piano Competition (for children) a year later. Oh no, I didn’t win, but I have a recording of that performance, and it is adorable, little me, many wrong notes, but with quite some musical imagination (where has it all gone???).

Why am I telling this little story? No, not to show off, but to explain how I learn a piece which appears to be at first (and also second and third) sight far too difficult. Objectively the Chopin back then was at least five numbers too big for me, but my teachers taught me highly valuable and rather simple tricks how to proceed; on the piano you obviously can learn each hand by itself at first, but in oder to conquer all the fast passage work without the daily fingerexercises a normal young piano student would have to do, I needed to work very slowly and methodically, and until today, on the cello, I use these piano tricks: dotted rhythms (fast-slow-fast-slow and vice-versa as well as slow-fast-fast-fast-slow-fast-fast-fast and the other way around), every day, plus the metronom. When the final speed would be 150, I started with 50, playing through the entire passage in slow motion, and if I mastered it, I was allowed to move up to 55, and so on. Never faster than I could still manage to do it without too many mistakes. Oh yes, that takes a long time, but I had no choice: I wanted to be able to play that piece, and not only the slow bits, but also the excitingly fast ones!

I just got back from my second rehearsal of the Chin Concerto, and I had to think about the time back then and how much I owed to the experience of having dug my teeth into a piece which was far too difficult but which at some point I more or less conquered thanks […]

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.

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.