Mr.Gerhardt, I am a member of Asian Youth Orchestra. I am very glad to play with you. Your playing is terrific and impressed on my memory. Since then, Schumann has been my favorite piece. I wish you and little gerhardt happy everyday!

Regards,

Johnson

thanks for your very nice reviews about the concerts in Hong Kong. Just one little remark: my cello isn’t really modern but celebrates this year its 300th birthday 🙂 And I am glad to hear for once that somebody was lacking some strength in the lower register because normally people praise the lower register over the upper one. Since it is a very big cello (used to be used as a church bass in prosessions) the lower registers come more natural to it, but I worked hard to make the upper register sound a bit better, so maybe I went too far? Might also be due to the very big orchestration in the Don Quixote – us cellists will never be completely audible all the time which is also not really what Strauss had in mind. He didn’t want the piece to be seen as cello concerto and often the cello’s role isn’t all that important. Thanks for your thoughts, and yes, I will come back to Hong Kong during the HK Arts Festival, concert on March 3 2011 with the Hallé Orchestra, playing the Elgar Concerto. And with the Hong Kong Phil I played with 10 years ago and hope to come back one day soon.
Best wishes,
Alban

I much enjoyed your two performances with the AYO in Hong Kong. I worte a little blip on them:

http://djclassical.blogspot.com/2010/08/concert-review-asian-youth-orchestra.html

Come back to HK soon! Perhaps with the HKPO? 🙂