Alban's Blog

Category: Personal

The loneliness of a soloist

September 26, 2009

Beautiful hall, wonderful orchestra, good audience, nice success – and one hour later I am sitting (again) in the artist lounge of the Concertgebouw, alone and tired after a very long day, but not ready to go to bed yet. I could have gone out with some of the orchestra musicians, but somehow I felt so empty and exhausted that I let this chance pass and now I regret it a bit, because to have finished the debut with the Concertgebouw Orkest would call for some kind of party, and now there is nobody to party with…

The Week After

August 21, 2009

I promise I really wanted to write my freshest memories from the world premier of Unsuk Chins Celloconcerto – and what happened? Nada, niente, nothing but hot air! Laziest cellist in the world has nothing to say anymore, even though there were enough emotions flowing I would have liked to capture in the aftermath. Big difference: normally I am alone after a performance, and the trip back home or to the next engagement has lots of empty time which I often fill with writing e-mails and blog. This time my little family came over to London to hear what all the work in Puerto Rico had been about. Besides that they love the Proms and didn’t want to miss my second one within 12 months (I got to play Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante August 2008 after the Chin premier got postponed). But with my son and wife around I didn’t have a free second afterwards, especially since we had planned a mini-trip to Italy and Croatia right after the concert.

Everything comes to an end…

August 5, 2009

My 10-year-old son János was crying today for minutes after dropping me off with his mother at the airport in San Juan. I had to fight with the tears as well, but in both our cases I don’t think it had much to do with the fact that I was parting earlier than them. We are so used to me parting for much longer than this one week which we are going to be separated this time that separation alone doesn’t move us anymore. It was much rather due to the fact that a beautiful time had come to an end.

Holidays combined with Work in Paradise

July 22, 2009

Now I finally understand good old Pablo (Casals) who moved to Puerto Rico when he was 80 years old, got married to a young Puerto Rican and died there 16 years later. OK, I am far from being Casals, and I am not 80 yet, neither have I moved here – but being 4 weeks in a row at the same place has almost got the feel of living here, especially since I did indeed married a young Puerto Rican (14 years ago) and do live right now in the house of her parents. Sure, I knew the island before, but this is the first time that I have had the luxury of spending plenty of time here while having to practise – and it is so much more fun than I thought it would be.

Summer Holidays – Recharging Batteries

July 10, 2009

Another long period of silence from my part, I am very sorry, but I had nothing to say, I am afraid. Oh yes, I had enough time, but I was in a phase were I didn’t feel the need to write nor to express myself. What did I do? Oh, not too much, I think I needed some time to recharge my batteries, be at home, talk with my little family, read, cook, see movies, practise a bit, do some home improvement work – just being lazy and snuggly in my nest.

The concert schedule was very light – I even managed to not take the cello out of its case for two full weeks until I had the chance to replace poor Truls Mörk (I think he got bit by a tick and has some severe problems, is cancelling half a year of concerts, what a loss!) in Hamburg, playing Schumann with the NDR (radio orchestra) under its chief C.v.Dohnanyi in the most beautiful Musikhalle of Hamburg for which I received one of the most forgetful reviews of my life; I won’t quote it here but reviews like that have the effect that many musicians don’t dare to take risks anymore on stage because we are being picked at if we miss a couple of notes. The guy even mentioned that the Schumann concerto belongs to the easier concertos (well, at least I consider it as probably the most awkward and technically as well as musically challenging works of the cello repertoire, but what do I know!) which makes it even worse that I overshot a couple of high notes. But at least I enjoyed playing with his German top-orchestra (acting principal cellist was my old friend Olaf Maninger who is principal cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic, which increased my level of nervousness…) and one of Germany’s legendary conductors – you can’t really tell that he is already 82, so much energy and wit, indeed inspiring me to take the risks I took… (yes, it’s always the other’s fault :))

China – Country of Food!

May 20, 2009

When my manager asked me last year if I wanted to play again with two orchestras in China I immediately agreed without knowing repertoire nor orchestra. Please, don’t judge nor blame me, but I agree to locations when I know that I will be fed well – and in China you can eat gloriously well. It is a different story to anything I have experienced in any Chinese restaurant in the rest of the world. Even the food in the “China Towns” of famous city as New York or San Francisco don’t come close to the quality and variety in China itself. And if I have a chance to travel here comfortably, stay in a nice hotel and play some concerts, even get paid for the spending some time in food-heaven, then who cares what piece I have to play?! I just got back from the most delicious dinner in wonderful company, sitting outside right at a lake, tons of Chinese around us (local food, not hotel food, is superior!), temperature to perfection (maybe 25 Celsius with low humidity, slight breeze) and the food to die for.

Live Stream from Australia

April 29, 2009

In a couple of hours I am going to play my debut with the Sydney Symphony in the probably most photographed concert hall in the world, the Sydney Opera. Yes, the famous landmark right at the water front, and it does look even more spectacular in real live – and it is huge! I didn’t know that inside this beautiful architecture there is a full opera house plus a concert hall which seats 2700 people, home to the really excellent Sydney Symphony, and I can’t wait to play the fragile but gorgeous 1st Saint-Saens Concerto there tonight (well, concert starts at 8 pm here, which is 12 pm Berlin time, or 6 am NYC, and there is a Bizet-Symphony first) – acoustics in rehearsal were excellent, but it can be always a surprise with people filling the hall. In case you feel like it, this concert will be video streamed in the internet, live and probably also afterwards – the link is in the title, but here it is again: http://www.abc.net.au/classic/

Visa Trouble

April 3, 2009

In Mid-February I wrote about my little greencard-theft-desaster and the ensuing trip from hell to the US Consulate in Frankfurt, almost missing my flight etc… Now I seem to be bound to go through exactly the same once more: The greencard, which I “earned” by being married to a Puerto Rican lady with a US passport (well, all Puerto Ricans carry a US passport) was about to expire in September anyway, and since I don’t spend enough days in the US and the center of my life is right now in Berlin, I decided not to attempt to apply for a prolongation but to give it up.

My wonderful US manager Michal Schmidt suggested we’d go with a O-1 Visa (for people with extraodinary abilities – yes, we had to twist some arms to convince the right people…) which would allow me to go in and out of the US without having to apply for a working visa for each concert. The decision was made well over 3 weeks ago, and in order to get it in time we paid $ 1750 to lower the time of the process from 8 months to 2 weeks. This Tuesday the approval arrived at my managers office in New York, she forwarded it via Fedex here to Berlin where it arrived yesterday.

I managed to get an interview at the US Embassy at 7:30 am this morning to have the visa put into my passport. After waiting for almost 2 hours the very nice gentleman told me he couldn’t do anything because the Department for Homeland Security had issued the 0-1 Visa alright, but not posted it onto the internet, which was essential for him to actually put the visa into my passport. He claims the delay is normal, but it means that I would have to wait until Monday afternoon to get the passport back, and our flight (János and me) to Salt Lake City leaves in the morning at 9:50 am. Beside the fact that this morning I almost missed my dress rehearsal (I am playing the 2nd Saint-Saens Concerto with the Konzerthausorchester tonight in Berlin and arrived exactly 9:58 am at the Konzerthaus for the dress at 10 am, stress pure, after racing through Berlin like a madman), I will be late for my duties in Utah (Dvorak with Utah Symphony and skiing with my son and wife – what could be more important than that!!!)…

I am vividly imagining another crazy ride to the aiport on Monday morning: The Embassy grants me the visa plus my passport at 9am in the morning, we jump into a taxi, dash to the airport, arrive there about 25 minutes before departure, and the feeling, once you sit in the aircraft you are supposed to sit in, is absolutely phantastic – I hope it will happen….

But first I will try to do this beautiful Saint-Saens-Concerto justice, it’s a small, but tough cookie, I must admit, and since I don’t have so much […]

Birmingham, AL – Birmingham, UK

February 25, 2009

Maybe it is nothing to be especially proud of, but I had a laugh when I realized a couple of months ago that I was going to play within four days with the two resident orchestras of the cities of Birmingham in Alabama as well as the “original” one in the UK. Pure coincidence, I promise, I had nothing to do with it. With both orchestras I have played before, obviously the one in England having the higher profile, but I must admit the Alabama Symphony did also quite a wonderful job with their energetic young British conductor (and pianist) Justin Brown.

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.