Alban's Blog

Category: Cello

Bad luck – bad travel…

February 21, 2009

Starting at around 9:30 pm this past Saturday my little streak of bad luck started with me taking a rare run on our treadmill. The only way I can be convinced to run on a thing like that is to watch some TV at the same time. There is no TV in the room with the treadmill, but a ladder, on which I genius-like placed my beautiful Macbook (the silver Apple-laptop) to watch some Seinfeld. 15 minutes into the show some vibration of my feet hammering this running-machine made the ladder tremble and my poor little Mac fell down, screen broken. I don’t mind being unlucky, but if it’s because of my own stupidity, I have a hard time forgiving myself.

Vibrato – Little Vibrato – No vibrato ???

February 5, 2009

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.

Dutilleux and Don Quixotte with the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne

January 11, 2009

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.

I arrived shortly after midnight in Cologne (yes, I confess, I sped horribly, up to 140 miles/hour), slept for 6 hours, got up early, walked across the street to the Philharmonic Hall to re-learn the Lalo while my manager took care of my sleeping little son and then rehearsed at 9:30 the concerto. The concert went surprisingly well and since then I have a special bond with this orchestra and especially its cello section. As a farewell present they gave me a beautiful little postcard with a cellist on ski plus a pair of black skiing socks – short story: while I had my cello with me in holidays because of the need of practising the Jolivet concerto, I didn’t bring any concert clothes. And while advising the orchestra to get me some black pants and a shirt, I forgot to tell them about black socks. Somebody of the cello section lent me his for the first concert – and that’s the reason they gave me black skiing socks, so that next time I go skiing I’d be prepared for another jump-in at least with socks.

The orchestra invited me back for October 2007 and wanted me to play the German premier of Unsuk Chin’s celloconcerto. Unfortunately she hadn’t finished it before then so we had to switch repertoire, and it became the Dvorak concerto. Because I love playing during the second half in the cello section I joined them for one of my all-time favorite orchestra pieces, Daphins and Chloe, which made the bond grew deeper between us – they invited me to their annual cello outing in a brewery, great fun! Soon after they invited me again for January 2009 to finally get the Chin Concerto, but guess what: she didn’t finish it again, so we had to switch program again, how embarrassing.

The chief conductor, great friend and musician, Markus Stenz, gracefully accepted to exchange the Chin with the Dutilleux Concerto, while in the second half we kept the original piece, Don Quixotte by Strauss. As a special encore the cellists of the orchestra are playing with me the hymnus of Julius Klengel for 12 cellos. Well, and this just happened, or at least the first concert, and I am so glad I survived it, because as usual I was late. I wonder if it has anything to do with me […]

Time flies, and some cellist is getting lazier and lazier

November 30, 2008

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.

Dvorak in Boston

November 14, 2008

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.

Paris: City of Love and the Arts

November 11, 2008

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

September 8, 2008

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.

Loosing 3 kilos in 6 days just by recording Prokofiev

September 6, 2008

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.

“Go home and take a shower!”

August 3, 2008

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.

Haydn and Prokofiev in Wellington, New Zealand

July 25, 2008

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.