Sports – Alban Gerhardt

Back at the Grant Park Festival in Chicago

Alban Gerhardt — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:37:30 +0000

For the fourth time I am going back to Chicago to play with the Grant Park Festival Orchestra. Sitting in one of these compared to Lufthansa rather old American Airline airplanes I am actually very much looking forward to my short stint with this highly motivated group in one of the most amazing open-air venues in the world; located right at Millenium Park the star architect (Disney Hall) Frank Gerry had built this very creative space in 2000 – about 20.000 people fit on the lawn in downtown Chicago looking at his eruptive shell while great arches over the lawn provide the greatest sound system I have experienced so far, righ before Hollywood Bowl, I dare say. Many little loudspeakers are attached to these arcs, so that at the very back of the lawn, maybe 200 m away from the stage, you hear almost better than right in front of it.

I already played there when concerts still took place at the old venue, not half as attractive but still charming since it is right in the middle of one of the world’s greatest and maybe most improved cities. In 1989 I went to the Ravinia Festival as part of the Steans Institute of Young Artists to take lessons with Walter and Robert Levin, Heinrich Schiff, Sylvia Rosenberg and some other wonderful musicians. Chicago itself struck me as a bit run down, but in the past ten, fifteen years it really developped into a gorgeous place to visit and live. This time I will play the Rococo Variations by Tchaikovsky, the conductor will be Hans Graf who is not only a great collaborator but also knows more about wine than any other person I have ever met. Well, more than me anyway, but that’s easy, since I can’t remember any names, so I am a real wine-moronâ€¦

It wasn’t much fun practising in the past few days since Berlin just had its hottest day ever, 38,7 degrees Celsius! I got up early when it was still “only” in the early thirties, but at some point I got worried for my poor cello, being covered in sweat. Oh, it’s not so much the Rococo Variations I am afraid of but much rather the Bach Suites I have to perform in 12 days in Berlin’s Radialsystem, maybe the coolest perform space in Germany. I think I am more scared and afraid of playing all Bachsuites than doing both Shostakovich Concerti, Prokofievs Cellosymphony and as encore Schumann and Haydn Concerti in one evening 🙂

Why? Well, because it is the bible for us cellists, everybody knows every single note and has an opinion about it – but that’s not even 5% of the reason; the real respect I have is that it is musically so incredibly difficult, to play in style with a lot of creativity, sense of improvisation and heart while trying not to get lost and even more important not to loose the audience. As amazing as this music is [...]

Everything comes to an end…

Alban Gerhardt — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:39:48 +0000

My 10-year-old son JÃ¡nos 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.He is a rather profound young man, who is very aware of time flying by quickly, especially well-spent time. We had maybe the best quality time ever spent together, although I was a bit sceptical how I would manage to work in such a holiday place like Puerto Rico, or vice versa what kind of holidays it would be while having to “work” – having to learn a brand new piece of music. Judging by our tears it must have worked out well, and indeed it did!

I have rarely spent such a relaxing holiday, and the two, three hours I worked behind the cello didn’t spoil the “recharging of my batteries” whatsoever, rather the opposite. It gave a bit of structure to an otherwise completely lazy day, that I actually enjoyed the freetime even more. Besides shooting some basketballs at the driveway of his grandmother, eating good food, swimming in the pool, body-surfing and playing beachtennis at the gorgeous playas of Puerto Rico 15 min away from the house we had some deep “man-to-man” conversations, often after 7:15 pm, when it got too dark to continue playing or reading at the beach. Day before yesterday we actually stayed until 9 pm, sitting on our little towels, watching the waves and talking about more or less everything that has any relevance to us (death, love, soccer, school, dreams, future, past, you name it). Most wonderful bonding time I’ll never forget!

Yes, everything comes to an end, happy times as well as unhappy ones – though somehow the unhappy ones tend to last longer; I wouldn’t have minded that my diving trip last week ended a bit earlier after getting so horribly seasick that I could hardly move at the end of it. I knew I was sensitive to too much movement, so before driving down South of the island I took a sick-pill which seemed to help very well until we got to our drop-off point four miles off the shore of Puerto Rico. The sea became more and more agitated, and while looking for my finns I had to abandon the position of looking at the horizon for 20 seconds, and in this short time the sea-sickness started creaping up on me, and once it is in this process, it is very, very difficult to stop itâ€¦

I did the first dive rather well, saw some nice fish down [...]

Bad luck – bad travel…

Alban Gerhardt — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:21:17 +0000

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.The next morning, Sunday, Feb 15, I took the train to Giessen, a small town about one hour North-East of Frankfurt, for a so-called “soloist’s portrait” before having to play both Saint-Saens concertion Tuesday. I arrived there at 2 pm, warmed up at one of the dressing rooms until the conductor Carlos Spierer, and old friend of mine and the “host” of this portrait, picked me up shortly before 3 pm. Both of us were rather distracted about the public conversation we had to lead that both of us didn’t really realize that we left the door of this room open. My brand-new blackberry laid openly on one of the desks, backpack and suitcase as well as the cello case with substitute bow in another corner of that room.

When I came back from the very interesting perforance/interview the blackberry was not on the table anymore, and after a few seconds of hoping that somebody might have put it away to protect it (how cute!) I realized that it was stolen. Suitcase, backpack and cellocase stood still there, but when I checked inside of the backpack I saw pretty quickly that my leatherpurse with all cards had been taken out plus my old Nokia cellphone (very nice one, still worked wonderfully…). Who cares about cards, you can cancel them and they’ll send you quickly new ones – but in this case it not only included my identity card and drivers licence, but also my greencard, and on Wednesday I had to fly to the US. It’s funny how slowly one adds up the different pieces until the disaster becomes clear; without the greencard I could not enter the USA, because it would be illegal to get into the country as a tourist while playing a concert.

On Monday I called the US consulate to find out what to do – “President’s Day”, an American holiday, nobody there, but an automated system: people who had their green card lost or stolen could go there on Monday, Wednesday and Friday between 8 and 11am to apply for a letter of transportation. I called Tuesday to describe the urgency of the matter, but no chance – I had to go on Wednesday at 8 am and hope I would still make the flight [...]

Teaching and playing in Madrid and Washington

Alban Gerhardt — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:16:12 +0000

Time flies, it is unbelievable – I had to get up this morning at 5:30 am in order to catch my flight back to the US at 6:50 (this is only possible in Berlin, since we have this lovely little city airport Tegel) which just has been cancelled, and it was already getting light when I was leaving my apartment at 5:50 am. Yes, it’s spring, and lazy me hasn’t written anything in here since a while. No, I wasn’t that busy, but I took a very welcome little break, skiing with my little family in Switzerland.Oh, we had the best time, and while my friend Paul who visited us in Flims in our cozy holiday apartment, I even had the pleasure of taking over the last of his three personal ski-instructor lesson. It was the first time since 30 years that I had somebody tell me how to ski, and it was so worth it. The teacher taught me in this 60 highly motivated minutes how to go down mogles (Buckelpiste), and something I have always been afraid is now the greatest fun on the slope. Thanks Ursina! 🙂

Before that I had been going a bit nuts, that’s true, being away from home just a bit too much for my taste, but for the first time I decided to fly my family for an extended weekend into one of Europe’s most beautiful cities: Madrid. I played two concerts there with the RTVE Orchestra, and they came for the last concert on Friday just to stay until Sunday, and finally, finally I got to see something from the place I was visiting (I am a bad tourist when I am on tour, mainly staying in the hotel, practising or working on the computer, how boring). We didn’t do anything special, just getting the city to know by walking all over town (we had glorious weather) and spending a couple of hours at the Picasso exhibition at the Reina Sophia museum.

The concerts there were with Walter Weller, the Sinfonia Concertante by Prokofiev was my welcome “victim” since I had played it already five times in January. How easy it becomes when the repertoire is not changing every week. A week later I played the same in Washington, and I never felt as comfortable with this big piece ever before. Conductor there was Hans Graf who had conducted my very first professional concert 19 years ago. Wow, almost 20 years of playing concerts in public, that is a long time I must admit, time to retire… 🙂

And in both cities I also had to teach, something I refuse to do on a regular base since I am not ready to take the responsability for even a single student depending on me to lead him to a job. But a masterclass here and there? I love it, it’s so interesting to face different students with different problems and trying to come up with some help within 45 minutes, sometimes very [...]

Recharging Batteries while Sight-Seeing and Sailing

Alban Gerhardt — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:52:07 +0000

After the last concert in Italy â€“ Poggi del Sasso â€“ on July 17th I could have almost locked my cello up until end of August if it wasnâ€™t for this one concert on August 2nd at the festival in Hitzacker, where I have to play in three concerts all Bachsuites plus a Reger-Suite as part of a workshop at noon. Why did I agree to this single date in the middle of the school summer holidays?

I could have left the cello and all other responsabilities for 5 weeks, recharing the batteries for the next season, enjoying life with wife and child, but instead I have to keep the Suites in my fingers and brain. Well, I was supposed to play on July 31 the world premier of the Unsuk Chin Celloconcerto at the Proms in London, but because of her opera â€œAliceâ€ which just got premiered in Munich she fell behind composing the piece and had to postpone it on short notice. By then I had already agreed to perform the Bach since I thought it would do me good to not only focus on modern music for a month but having to work on the cellistâ€™s bible. And now I am stuck with this single concert. Cancelling? No way, I donâ€™t do that, I pay for my decisions â€“ especially since part of the plan was to finally force myself to play all of the Suites at once. And since I had the chance to play them already in Italy I felt safe enough to put the cello away for a week already and take holidays, three parts in 2 weeks:

First we took four extra days after the festival and toured Tuscany by car: Montalcino, Pienza, Montepulciano, San Gimignano, Firenze and Bologna. What incredibly beauty, to see especially these small little cities which havenâ€™t changed much in the past 800 years (especially San Gimignano), quite touching and overwhelming. After that I flew directly to Stockholm, rented a car, drove to VÃ¤stervik where my two brother-in-laws had prepared our sailing wooden sailing boat which we wanted to sail down to Germany in a tour-de-force of 3 nights and days of continuous sailing. Unfortunately the winds were too strong, we had to take breaks at nights because of our exhaustion of figthing the 2 meter waves in the Baltic Sea, and when yesterday the wind didnâ€™t change as promised by the weather service to a a bit milder West wind we had to change course and stop in Ã–land. Right before the harbour of Borgholm we hit ground, got a huge crack in the hull (the bottom) and just made it in the harbour where we fought for the sinking ship for abhout an hour until the Â Â firetruck came with a huge pump and saved it.

No, I was never really afraid for my life, just felt horrible because we could have avoided this accident and continued our beautiful trip for another two days [...]

Free Time – with Reger and Sports…

Alban Gerhardt — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 20:49:15 +0000

Oh, this is so sad, my concert-free time between the Shostakovich No.2 in Halle on Feb 22 and the rehearsals in Amsterdam for Sinfonia Concertante which start on March 9 is almost over.And while I have been a lazy blog writer, I wasn’t lazy at all being “free”, since I have to prepare for the second part of the Reger project; this is going to be a double cd, of which the first part with the two late piano-cello sonatas and the d-minor solosuite has been recorded already last year, and now the two remaining solo suites and the two early piano-cello sonatas are waiting for us, five days before my concerts with Berlin Phil – the perfect preparation for a nerv-racking happening.

Why? Well, while I find it extremely difficult to play in Berlin with my entire family, friends and colleagues listening, I am getting rather paranoid about recordings. For me this is the biggest stress, especially when I have to record rare repertoire. This is the reason why I was sitting during these “free” days in my basement in order to learn and eventually memorize these stubborn Sonatas, since otherwise I can’t make any sense of them. Today I put the very beautiful op.5 in my head, and suddenly the piece is starting to take some shape, at least in my brain. We won’t have the opportunity to perform these pieces in concert (except a little dress rehearsal the night before in the recording venue in front of friends and family of the pianist Markus Becker), so it is even more important to be technically and musically more prepared than ever.

So easily one gets wound up trying to just be perfect in a recording session, instead of trying to instill some life into this dead, cold medium. And if I don’t feel completely on top of the score and the purpose of the piece, I might as well not put myself in that situation.

Anyway, this is what I did in the mornings, and in the afternoon I tried to fulfill my role as father, went to go-carting with my son JÃ¡nos, practised the piano (arghhhhh) with him and this is the best: with an 8-year-old one can indeed have some rather deep conversations. It sounds so lame and old news, but children do have a better insight in many things, and it is wonderful to talk to him even about career problems and decisions, because he understands.

Now I am sitting in bed, following the Championsleague scores; Porto seems to be beating the FC Chelsea, which would be quite an upset. Poor Michael Ballack, left Bayern Munich to join a contender, and if they get kicked out, he has only his money to count…

I never wrote that before? I love sports, follow it online and most recently live (JÃ¡nos and me went already 5 times this season to see our soccer team Hertha; this Saturday we were part of the 74200 people in the stadium [...]

Family Holidays

Alban Gerhardt — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:15:39 +0000

My German manager and friend Markus BrÃ¶hl told me today on the phone that finally I sounded happy again and wanted to know what the problem was before. Nothing, I replied, I was as miserable and sad as always 🙂 My situation is exactly the same like the weeks before, except that I am a bit nervous since I haven’t touched the cello for 6 days, and in 2 days there is a Haydn D Major in Nashville to play.But then I realized that the “happiness” Markus felt on the phone was probably just that: I hadn’t touched the cello and went skiing instead with my son in Austria. Very little snow but we had the greatest time! We skied more or less the whole skiing day and had so much fun. We stayed at this farmhouse in Schwarzenberg for the fourth time in a row, Janos played with their kids in the evenings and we cooked delicious dinners, played games, talked, laughed, no music….

And somehow these 6 hours in the fresh mountain air completely regenerated me, my batteries are recharged and I am ready to take on the huge workload waiting for me in the next few months (so much repertoire to learn, it’s not even funny…)

Elgar and Sports in San Diego

Alban Gerhardt — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:15:48 +0000

The last few days have been a reminder to me why I love so much what I am doing: to play a beautiful piece with an enthusiast orchestra and a very fine conductor while having time to do some outdoor activity and making new friends – what else could one want from life?Playing the Elgar Concerto is always a great joy, since it is gorgeous music but not as difficult and complicated as most other concertos. And how glad I was to find out that the San Diego Symphony is not only one of the better orchestras in the country, but also incredibly friendly, almost has a youth-orchestra-vibe to it. The conductor Jiajia Ling was an absolute delight to work with and I must admit I had five very memorable days here.

But it wasn’t only about music – after the first rehearsal I asked the concertmaster Jeff Thayer if he knew where I could play some tennis, and he recommended his fiancee as a sparring partner. It felt amazing to play in the middle of winter on an outside court under the Californian sun two hours of intense tennis, somehow very inspiring to play Elgar a couple of hours later 🙂

And yesterday, on Sunday with a matinee at 2 pm, Jeff took me along to a soccer match, which couldn’t have been more fun. Oops, I think I’ll continue this tomorrow, now I have to catch the car which is supposed to bring me to the airport – back to Europe for a recital with Steven Osborne in Jersey (Channel Islands…)

Willkommen zu Alban’s Blog

Alban Gerhardt — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 03:55:55 +0000

Since a while I started thinking of starting my own blog in order to get some more feedback from fellow musicians or general audiences about the way I see, feel and understand music making, the music “scene” or business as well as general things in culture. I have no idea if there is a real interest for this, but I thought I’d check it out and see what happens…