I was about eight and a half years old, playing with my toys in the garden, when my mother asked me, if I would like to play another instrument besides the piano, because my little sister had just begun the violin. I wasn’t too interested, but to get her out of my face, I said “Why not?”, and then she suggested the cello. Same answer. Today she says that she could have named any instrument and I would have agreed!

As a teenager and by rather lazy nature I didn‘t like practicing too much, as a matter of fact I practically hated it. Nowadays it has beomethe greatest pleasure because it is the only time where I can really focus on just one thing. No telephone, no computer with e-mail, no so-called multi-tasking, but just the cello, me and the music. It is almost like an escape from the multiple tasks a career requires. I love to practice new pieces, and there always lays a great challenge in re-learning pieces I played already a thousand times. The more often I work on a piece intensely, the deeper I can feel it, the better I understand it and recognize performing possibilities which I hadn‘t seen before, but as everything in life, the last few percents of achieving anything hurt a lot.

In many ways I hate the word “project” and I prefer to call it at best “commitment at schools”. For my first performances in the US I was obliged to also participate in the so-called residencies program which meant nothing else but doing some pioneer work in schools, elementary as well as high-schools. At first I thought myself for too good and did it more or less reluctantly.