Personal – Alban Gerhardt

Sharing thoughts or just describing concerts?

Alban Gerhardt — Sun, 22 Mar 2015 20:51:43 +0000

A German journalist reminded me the other day of my diary which is called “blog”, asking how much my audience has to know about me. I told him that as long as it wasn’t embarrassing they could know everything, and since there is very little I am embarrassed about it would leave far too much material which obviously I am not sharing here as I hardly ever post anything. And do I really share my deepest thoughts about music, life, feelings, ideas on these pages here? While I have never received a proper shitstorm I have been misunderstood and misquoted before, I have harmed myself by sometimes being too opinionated and by giving out judgements where it might not be my place to judge as I am too involved in the musical world.

Winter in Australia

Alban Gerhardt — Sat, 09 Aug 2014 12:11:34 +0000

How I was dreading these past three weeks, being “forced” to leave my beloved family in the middle of the summer holidays behind to go once around the globe into the Australian winter, but as it sometimes happens, my fears were all postively disappointed and I had the most wonderful time while my big son is surfing in Puerto Rico (staying at his grandmother) and my wife having a blast in Bulgaria, her parents taking care of the little one.

We had spent quite a lot of time together the months before, me only leaving for either very short (like the Wigmore Hall solo recital in mid June) or us travelling all together, the ten days in Brussels (playing Dvorak and Gubaidulina with the Orchestre National of Belgium with Andrey Boreyko conducting) or five days in Florence (Prokofiev with Orchestra della Toscana and Thomas Dausgaard) – oh, such good food at both cities, where we stayed in private apartments which makes you feel much less of a tourist than much rather a local.

Right before I had the pleasure to perform the beautiful cello concerto of Unsuk Chin three times with the Berlin Philharmonic in my favorite hall. Favorite not so much because of the acoustics but of all the memories and experiences I had in this hall. My father having played in that orchestra for 46 years took me at every other week along to a concert, I grew up with this amazing orchestra, heard the most phenomenal soloists (Horowitz, Arrau, Serkin, Gilels, Fournier, Tortelier, Nelsova, Rostropovich, just to name a few) and finally did my orchestra debut there with a small chamberorchestra in 1987.

This peformance of the Chin was for me very meaningful also on a different level; I feel that inspite of the huge amount of contemporary concertos written for the cello in the past 40 years, very few have managed to “stay alive”, being performed again and again as it happened with the great concerti Rostropovich had inspired from Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Britten, Dutilleux, Lutoslawski and Schnittke (for example). Are these just better pieces or is there another reason? I think it has a lot to do with Rostropovich having relentlessly pushed these masterworks until everybody knew of their value.

Today we ask every composer to write us a concerto, then we premier it, maybe record it, just to jump to the next concerto written for us. The excitement of the world premier has taken over (similar to the need of having a world record at an international track and field meeting) and the necessitiy of performing new pieces as often as possible in order for them to grow (including the performer) is being neglected. It is very difficult to convince orchestras to schedule a new piece if it is not at least the country’s first performance, but the concerts with Berlin Phil marked the first time the Chin celloconcerto was being played without being “a premier”; the first German performance had already happened some years [...]

Not without my son…

Alban Gerhardt — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 00:37:09 +0000

After not really having been much of a father the first time around 15 years ago for my first son I am making up for it the second time. When my first son Janos was born I was living with my first wife in New York, mainly performing in Europe which meant I was travelling back and fourth sometimes for just one single concert, and still I didn’t really manage to participate in his first two years, neither do I remember much of it, sadly. As I was the sole generator of income it was the deal that I would continue my career while Janos’ mother took care of him while studying part-time. Entering the third year of my second (and last!) marriage I am happy to realize that I learnt from my mistakes.

My wife Gergana is a wonderful musician herself, violinist, and as she has the same right and needs to perform as I do we are succesfully coordinating our concerts so that we can be as much together as possible while still playing the engagements we like to be playing. But at times even our genius planning can’t avoid us having to perform at the same time at two different venues which just happened for a couple of days. Although it is not easy being apart from your loved one we had some beautiful weeks before this dry stretch, spending 2 glorious weeks in Tenerife and around that time some quality time at home. March and April have become our working months, and I had some wonderfully intense schedule while being in charge of little Kaloyan, now 9 months old. The first intense week I was still on my own, performing with members of Düsseldorf Symphony Schuberts String Quintet and with the orchestra three times Shostakovich’s First Concerto conducted by Andrey Boreyko who really brought out some frighteningly beautiful moments, especially in the slow movement. Concerts where Friday, Sunday morning and Monday evening, so I chose to follow the call of a friend, Maarten Mostert in Amsterdam to do six hours of teaching at his school on my day off, Saturday March 8. I left Dusseldorf in a rented car at 6:30 am and started teaching in Amsterdam from 9 am until 2:30 pm, drove afterwards to some gorgeous little castle near Dortmund where I spent the evening and night babysitting my son during a trio concert of my wife only to leave them at 8:30 am the next morning to make it to the matinee performance at 11 am in Düsseldorf. After the concert I took a train to Stuttgart for a Dvorak rehearsal with Walter Weller and Stuttgart Philharmonics the next morning, heading right back the 450 km to perform the last one in Düsseldorf. As there was no train left that night I took the car and drove after the concert to Stuttgart for the dress rehearsal the next morning. Silly me, wanting to be back home as quickly as possible, I had chosen a flight [...]

Kurt Masur

Alban Gerhardt — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 04:41:48 +0000

Part of my top prize at the International ARD Competition in 1990 was my Japanese debut in April 1991. I got to play a recital at Suntory Hall and the Dvorak Concerto with an orchestra in Tokyo which probably doesn’t even exist anymore (Shinsei Symphony). During my 10-day stay I had the unique chance to join a private celebration at the house of Kurt Masur’s in-laws. The director of the Goethe-Institut had invited me along, and after having met the Maestro already officially but very briefly at the price-ceremony of the other competition, I had won in 1990, the German Music Council Competition in Bonn, this time I had the rare opportunity to actually get to know this man, who had played such a crucial role in the peaceful transition not even two years earlier which resulted into the German re-unification.

While he seemed rather distant and almost arrogant in Bonn, standing tall next to the re-unification chancellor Helmut Kohl, in Tokyo I was overwhelmed by his warmth and kindness – I met the real “Mensch” Kurt Masur in the circle of his family, not the public figure. Forgive my bad memory, I don’t recall every detail of that for me very meaningful evening. What I remember very vividly was our very first musical collaboration: after having played a bit of Bachsuite on the cello, I somehow ended up at the piano (back then I still felt like half pianist, half cellist), accompanying Kurt Masur with the Erlkönig by Franz Schubert which I had often played with my mother, so I knew it by heart.

Two years later, after my third and last competition, the Leonard-Rose-Competition in Maryland (near Washington DC), I invited him, now chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and his lovely wife Tomoko to my recital debut at Alice-Tully-Hall in New York. As I had dislocated the middle-finger of my left hand at a bike accident three weeks prior to this I managed to play the concert only after couple of healing sessions with an old Japanese lady and a big bandage around the blue finger. No idea how I played, but somehow my on-stage suffering did not turn my new-found friends away. When I moved to New York not even a year later, my first introduction to my now favorite breakfast meal, bagel with creamcheese, smoked salmon, onions, tomatoes and capers, happened in the Westchester home of the Masurs; Tomoko had prepared it, as I remember many more meals in their house accompanied by very inspiring conversations about music, life, politics and also education. I saw their teenaged boy Ken slowly grow into a man, totally unimpressed by the fame of his father, and I realized these parents must have done something very right.

The love I felt between this couple, to see this adored and even sometimes feared Maestro turn into a loving father and husband when he entered his home, with small insecurities and an adorable shyness about him, touched and inspired [...]

Lazy as never before!

Alban Gerhardt — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 12:39:13 +0000

This might have been the laziest summer I have had in my entire life, and it felt sooo good! Directly after my two-week-stint in Colorady with my son János I did a bit of teaching in the beautiful city of Weimar. My first Meisterkurs ever, five days of giving lessons to the same people, quite a challenge: normally I gave little masterclasses of three hours, where I could spread my “wisdom” to a couple of youngsters and then take off. This time I was forced to see the lovely cellists every day and check if what I had told them made any sense and had any impact. It was rewarding but also frightening as at some point I started doubting everything I wanted to tell them. When I perform I am very sure of what I want to say with the music, but in teaching I don’t want the students to say what I am saying, I want them to develop their own voice, but it is easier said than done…

Unfortunately I missed the final concert because of a duo recital with my wife Geri at a small but delicious festival in Flims, Switzerland. Delicious? Well, part of our fee was to stay full-board at the Waldhaus-Hotel with a gourmet restaurant. I think I have never eaten that well in my entire life, every night an exquisite five-course meal, a real treat for our taste-buds. We had rented a little convertible Volkswagen, driving from Weimar to Flims and back to Berlin within a week, enjoying every minute of it. In Berlin we prepared for another festival, this time near Dresden, the Moritzburg Festival by my colleague Jan Vogler who is running it succesfully since 20 years! We had a blast, playing a couple of chamber concerts with wonderful musicians (Geri was shining in Mozarts E-Flat Major Quintet as first fiddle!) while getting innerly ready for our real holiday, first a week in Bulgaria and then three weeks in Mexico.

I know, I still have to justify why this was the laziest summer; alright, we are talking here from more or less July 13 (Elgar in Vail with the Philadelphia Orchestra) until October 2. In this stretch of almost 12 weeks I have taught a bit at the beginning, played a duo recital with Geri, three chambermusic concerts in Moritzburg, in between twice the Dutilleux Concerto (“Tout un monde lointain..”) in Mexico City and the rest was free time – I was in heaven. The week in Bulgaria was beautiful as it was the first time János, Geri and me had spent any summertime together, just far too short, visiting her relatives in Pleven and spending a couple of days at the Black Sea.

With mixed feelings we dropped him off in Berlin to go back to school while I had half a day to get back into cello-shape to rehearse the next day not the easiest piece in the cello literature, the Dutilleux, in Mexico City. Geri [...]

Separation

Alban Gerhardt — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 21:54:45 +0000

Today I felt the pain of separation in its full strength since quite a while. The profession of a travelling musician makes you get used to being separated from your loved ones and since I have been doing this since more than two decades one should hope I wouldn’t feel the pain as doctors are said to not feel the suffering of their patients nor their deaths. Well, today was different.

The last thirteen days I have spent together with my son János, more or less every of the more than a million seconds, making an already good father-son relationship even stronger. Unlike last summer it was only one concert which brought me over to the US, but again it was a trip to paradise. My good (not so old) friend Anne-Marie McDermott, whom I was incredibly close to during my seven-year stint in New York (1994-2001) and whose musicianship inspired me very much during these years, had invited me to play the Elgar Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Stéphane Denève at Vail’s “Bravo Colorado” Festival of which has recently been appointed artistic “boss” (administrator sounds so administrative, which she is not at all – hands on musician as she has always been).

Although this invitation was for Friday, the 13th of July, on top of it during a stretch which I had hoped to keep free after playing a recital with Steven Osborne at the Rheingau-Musikfestival, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to perform with one of the best orchestras in the world, with a conductor about whom I had heard nothing but wonderful things, and last but not least I would have the chance to spend some time with an old friend. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the direct flight Frankfurt-Denver due to the late booking. We had to travel Last year I had taken Janos for three weeks with me while having to perform altogether six concerts in three different States (Oregon, Tennessee and New York, including the six Bachsuites, all three Britten Suites and the Saint-Saens Concerto) and he had loved it almost as much as me. When I offered him the possibility to join me this summer for a shorter trip but much less work for me, he was excited, and on rather short notice I booked our flights not even a month ago without having planned anything “fun” in advance. But fun we had plenty of!

Berlin-Frankfurt-Philadelphia-Denver, got there in the evening, rented a car and drove the hundred miles to Vail, arriving past midnight. I hadn’t slept all flight, watching movies and chatting with Janos, who at least slept during the car ride. The high altitude didn’t stop us to jump into holiday mode instantly though; after enjoying an a capella men’s choir in the morning, we drove an hour for some zip-lining adventure, racing back and fourth over one of these rough canyons we only know from Wild West movies. Although I have been travelling now for such a long time [...]

Skiing in Switzerland…

Alban Gerhardt — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 23:37:25 +0000

I am not trying to justify myself, but I will just give you another (weak) reason for my laziness in writing here: thanks to a chief editor of a classical magazin in Germany, the “Fonoforum”, who somehow thought that my way of writing rather honestly and directly about whatever happens to a travelling musician could be of interest for his readers, I am writing every month a “thing” for his publication. And somehow, this “thing” which I am normally writing within an hour or so, takes even more drive away from writing onto my own homepage. And while writing here is without guidelines and not too many readers (or at least I don’t know them), at the Fonoforum I mustn’t write more than 3500 letters which I haven’t managed yet, and the poor man is pretty upset about my unability to just state the most important things – I just wrote the new “blog”, and I am already at 3935, which is almost 15% above.

I am also getting a bit self-conscious as I am normally not aware anybody would be reading the stuff I am writing, but being printed is a different story. The other day my old friend Lars Vogt mentioned that he is enjoying my monthly blog, and the manager of the Soloistes Europeéns, with whom I just played the Saint-Saens and Honegger Concerti, asked me if I could mention the orchestra – gratefully I told him that I would love to if he would take some photos from rehersals. I am supposed to provide photo material to each blog entry, but I am so incredibly lame about taking photos, I constantly forget to do it as you probably can tell from the few photos in this blog. To make a long story short: suddenly having the “job” of writing a column in a real paper made it less fun and less relaxed than it used to be.

At least at our skiing holidays right after Christmas I managed to take some nice shots during the only two nice days in the mountains of Andermatt near Lucerne (Switzerland). Why on earth Switzerland, with the strong Swiss Franc and the not really up-to-date skiing resorts? Well, Geri had a concert in Lucerne and we wanted to connect both her work and our fun. We drove with Janos down there, left her in Lucerne and went ahead for a gorgeous day of skiing, when she joined us the next day for her first experience on ski. We had a blast, the three of us, in our little apartment, one day completely snowed in, no skiing because of the danger of avalanches, so we just played Monopoly and cards all day long. Did I actually mention that this future wife of mine is a great fiddle player? We even played our first concerts together, last month, in Cologne, Frankfurt, at the radio station in Berlin and at a private concert in London, and it was wonderful making music with [...]

What do you listen to in the moment?

Alban Gerhardt — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:19:34 +0000

A concert venue, where I am going to play in January, wanted to know what I am listening to in the moment; somehow I misunderstood and thought it was about popular music, so my quick answer was “Radiohead”, because my fiancÃ©e loves it and I thought that they music was different to other bands, that they were “recognizable” for a moron like me (who doesn’t know anything about pop or rock music). Well, the answer wasn’t enough, they wanted a longer statement, and since I am pretty bad in bullshitting, I decided to stick to the truth – here it is:

I don’t listen to music outside of a concert hall. I love going to concerts and listen to all different kind of music (opera, orchestra, chambermusic, jazz, experimental, you name it), but the older I get the less I am intrigued to listening to canned recordings. When listening to music I need to have the live atmosphere, I want to see the creation in process, not some pre-made product. Indeed I live in a very lucky place, Berlin, where we have tons of live music every day, dozens of concerts to choose from, three opera houses, jazz-clubs, other clubs, and I am spoilt by having that chance, I admit. I do own quite many LP’s, mainly piano music, loved Horowitz and Dinu Lipatti while growing up, but I haven’t even replaced the needle on my excellent LP-player when it broke four years ago. Although I own a little ipod, I have no music on it whatsoever, just audio books which I listen to while jogging. I don’t need a constant stream of music draining out the last bit of thoughts I might be having – and I do think better when there is no musical distraction around me, and I love to be alone with my thoughts, don’t need any kind of background noise for it. What I am listening to in the moment? The Silent House by Orhan Pamuk 🙂

Playing for Presidents

Alban Gerhardt — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 23:23:21 +0000

While having delicious Japanese food in some hidden bar-like restaurant in Melbourne with my colleague Howard Penny (wonderful guy, professor at ANAM and member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe), my cellphone rang in the middle of dinner. This fact alone is worth mentioning because my phone very rarely rings, and if, it would be either my fiancÃ©e Geri or my son JÃ¡nos on the other line – other correspondence I take care of via e-mail. Normally I would ignore a phonecall being in company and especially while eating (not that I am so polite, but I just love food too much to be interrupted), but when I saw that the caller was our pediatrician Dr. Hauber I chose to answer his call, worrying about my son’s health.

As Dr.Hauber is not only a doctor but also a collector of string instruments, which he loansÂ students more or less for free, as well as a benefit-concert organizer, this call luckily had nothing to do with JÃ¡nos but the unusual request of forwarding my cellphone number to the office of the German presidentÂ who was looking for a cellist to play at a state dinner honoring the Turkish president. Why him? Well, some doctors have good connections 🙂A few minutes later I was called by the president’s office in form of a very nice man who invited me for a nominal fee to perform two pieces of five minutes the day after my arrival from my five-week Australian tour. Since I don’t suffer jet-lag much I agreed to do it under such rather strenuous circumstances, also, as the gentleman pointed out, for the pure honor to play for the president. Further details we fixed later in some e-mails, especially the repertoire (Prelude of the Sixth Bachsuite and the last movement of Mozart’s G major duo for violin and viola, arranged for cello, with Geri, who by the way is an amazing violinist).

Geri and me worked the Mozart Duo with great detail and dedication the morning after my arrival (I had an early start anyway, as my son Janos had to be prepared for school), and after a couple of hours of desk work (tons of mail after 5 weeks “off”) we drove to “Schloss Bellevue”, the residence of the German president in Berlin. We arrived there shortly before 7 pm, hundreds of soldiers already awaiting the Turkish president with torches in front of the castle while we made our way through the back entrance. Unfortunately there had been a bomb threat that afternoon which delayed the whole evening for about two hours. When guests were getting a bit nervous, I was called from our dressing room to play already something ad hoc. Trying to be a good sport I sat down in the big dining hall and started playing the first Bachsuite – with absolutely no effect; people didn’t even seem to notice me at all.

It felt rather humiliating and very embarrassing, and I am still upset with [...]

Time in Australia (in German)

Alban Gerhardt — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 02:34:03 +0000

Sorry, another blog entry in German -Â will soon write something in English again 🙂

Mein Vater hat mir als Kind immer wieder gepredigt wie wichtig es ist, nicht nur regelmÃ¤ÃŸig zu Ã¼ben, sondern ganz bewuÃŸt die “Batterien” wieder aufzuladen. Von Natur aus faul ist mir dies nie schwer gefallen; ohne Gewissensbisse habe ich es auch dieses Jahr wieder geschafft, nach meinem letzten Konzert am 15.Juli in den USA mein Instrument nach meiner RÃ¼ckkehr in Berlin fÃ¼r vier Wochen nicht anzurÃ¼hren. ZunÃ¤chst Ã¼bergab ich mein 300 Jahre altes Goffriller-Cello meiner Geigenbauerin zur jÃ¤hrlichen Wartung (der Hals war etwas loseâ€¦) und verbrachte dann mit meiner Verlobten drei Wochen in ihrer wunderschÃ¶nen Heimat Bulgarien, am Schwarzen Meer, ihrer Geburtstadt Pleven sowie in den Bergen des Balkan und Rilagebirges. Eine Woche verging allerdings, bis die regelmÃ¤ÃŸigen AlbtrÃ¤ume (Flugzeug verpassen, Blackouts auf der BÃ¼hne, Verlust des Instruments oder einfach ein StÃ¼ck spielen zu mÃ¼ssen, das man gar nicht kennt) sich einstellten. Erst in Augenblicken der Entspannung merke ich, wie stressig das Leben als freischaffender Musiker ist. Bei meiner RÃ¼ckkehr aus den verdienten Ferien war mein Cello zum GlÃ¼ck noch nicht fertig, was mir noch ein paar freie Tage mit meinem aus Puerto Rico zurÃ¼ckgekehrten Sohn bescherte. Problem vieler Musiker ist es allerdings, nach lÃ¤ngerer Pause wieder in Form zu kommen; dank ausgeklÃ¼gelter FingerÃ¼bungen reichte es mir glÃ¼cklicherweise, mein Instrument zwei Tage vor meinem Abflug nach Australien zu beharken – allein die Hornhaut hatte sich so stark zurÃ¼ckgebildet, dass ich mich durch ein bissel Schmerz durchbeissen musste.

Um wenigstens eine Woche zuhause verbringen zu kÃ¶nnen, hatte ich beinahe um jeden Tag mit den Verantwortlichen vom Sydney Symphony Orchestra gefeilscht, die mich am liebsten drei Tage vor der ersten Probe vorort haben wollten. Da ich seit 18 Jahren zwischen Kontinenten pendele, habe ich nie Probleme mit Jetlag und konnte mich schluÃŸendlich durchsetzen, erst am Abend vor der ersten Probe in dieser eindrucksvollen Stadt landen zu mÃ¼ssen. FÃ¼nf Wochen Australien – zu lange fÃ¼r meinen Geschmack, doch da die Flugkosten insbesondere fÃ¼r einen Cellisten (Cello erfordert einen eigenen Sitzplatz) sehr hoch sind, tun sich oft mehrere Orchester zusammen, um die Kosten untereinander auf zu teilen.

Erster Stop: Brahms Doppelkonzert mit dem 36jÃ¤hrigen Vasily Petrenko am Pult und der noch jÃ¼ngeren Karen Gomyo an der Geige in der groÃŸartigen Sydney Opera. Ein schÃ¶nes Erlebnis, doch auch die 7.Sinfonie von Schostakowitsch, die ich am dritten Abend neben der Solocellistin mitspielen durfte, war eine willkommene Herausforderung nach der langen Spielpause. Da mein Vater fast 45 Jahre Mitglied der Berliner Philharmoniker war, bin ich tief in meinem Herzen Orchestermusiker und ergreife jede MÃ¶glichkeit, die sich mir bietet, die symphonischen Werke nach der Pause mit zu spielen, wenn es Dirigent und Cellogruppe erlaubt; normalerweise schÃ¶n versteckt ganz hinten, direkt vor dem Blech, allein wollte mich die Gruppe dieses Mal vorne schwitzen sehen. Bei diesem Konzert wurde mir plÃ¶tzlich bewuÃŸt, dass die Zeit nicht anhÃ¤lt: sonst war ich immer einer “jungen Musiker”, und mittlerweile sind selbst die Dirigenten jÃ¼nger als ich.

Die zweite [...]