Divine Intervention

Yes Marianne, Stockholm castle is certainly a cool place. So I added it to the Cool Places list.

Well, here is another one, where I played day before yesterday:

Clos Vougeot, Bourgogne, France

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And some beautiful music while you read…

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I have some hellish weeks behind me. I’m quite used to stress and having much to do, but this was the worst in many years. Every once in some years a musician gets in a situation where many little things adds up to create a situation which is almost impossible. Almost.

I started to record Beethoven Sonatas at the beginning of this month. The first CD will include the whole op. 2 (three sonatas) and op. 49 (two sonatas). The hall where I record was closed when I originally planned to do it so it got postponed for a week later. I still thought that I would have some time to practice the pieces I had to play later in the month during the recording days. Well, stupid me. The Beethoven sonatas swallowed about 11 hours a day, and after that I did try to open the other scores and I did get a little bit of practicing, but not much.

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So, I get back home, and next on the schedule is a festival in Madison, GA, with music by Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Charles Rex. I was playing a violin sonata with Charles Rex’ son Charles Gordon Rex, violinist in New York Phil., and a two piano suite with Shan-shan. While the suite was not so hard, the violin sonata turned out to have a movement built on fast fugatos a la Hindemith. It is the toughest thing to learn for me. I played too little Bach as a kid, and when the fugues turn contemporary I have to spend hours and hours to get them into my fingers…
And, did I tell you that there were two days before we left for Georgia when I got back from Sweden?

After Shan-shan and I got into Madison, we went right to the hall and rehearsed on empty stomachs until midnight. We were staying at the Madison Inn, which is selected as one of Americas best Inns, and it was great:

The festival is headed by Christopher Rex, the other son of the composer. Charles Gordon told me that his father was very severe, and used to punish his sons almost daily. His father also had polio, and died young. He couldn’t compose for his last 15 years because of the pain in his body. The human emotions in the music of his father was a side Charles Gordon said he never had seen in real life as a kid: “maybe that’s why I am so passionate about his music…this is something of him I want to remember”. It’s a truly touching story, and there is a movie being made, you can watch a trailer from its website here.

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It’s a mystery how different the works of an artist can be from his personality. I once heard someone saying “you play like you are”…what a load of crap. As Christina pointed out in a comment on the Beethoven Sonata site the person and his works can be so completely different. Beethoven wrote heartbreakingly tender music, but was everything but tender in life. When I meet Ola Salo he is soft-spoken and thoughtful. Not the type (like me) who can enter into rage pretty quickly . Then, on stage, he transforms to the most dynamic and crazy stage personality Sweden ever had. Well, according to Per Bjurman, since Snoddas.

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The concert went fine, but since two weeks back I have had to practice (or recording) around the clock, and I know the most intense practicing is still to come. We’re heading back home. Out flight is delayed…and delayed…and cancelled. We manage to get another one, which is delayed, too but we will get back tonight, not tomorrow. Well, if you count 5 in morning as tonight…of course our bags didn’t arrive.

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I now had two days before the next travel, to France and the festival at the castle on picture on top. I was one of three invited pianists, the two others being James Levine and Menahem Pressler. David Chan, the concert master of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is the artistic director and I was programmed to play the Concerto for violin, piano and string quartet by Ernest Chausson with him and the Manfred Quartet.

This piece is, I discovered, the Rach 3 of chamber music: une saloperie as you would say in French. Incredibly difficult, and 85 pages of music. And I had 2 days in front of me to learn it before going to the airport. Going to bed at 6am, I wake up at 9am and before breakfast I go right to the piano to learn a few pages. There are just WAY too many notes. I have to say that I am kind of panicking at this stage, the stress hormones makes me sleep very little and I practice 12 hours each of the two days, plus as many hours as I can before going to the airport the third day.

On the plane I sit with the score trying to learn notes without piano while people around me are sleeping. I arrive in Paris, take a train to Dijon for the first rehearsal. Of course the train is almost two hours delayed so that takes away some practicing I could do before the rehearsal. Now, during the two days until the concert I’m holding the other musicians hostage to the thought that the last piece of the festival will be…not such a good experience. I practice every minute there is of the day, when not rehearsing.

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First night I sleep because of the flight and not having slept in some 40 hours, but second night I can’t sleep at all. Finally, at 6am I fall asleep and feel like drunk when getting up two hours later to practice before the last rehearsal at 11am. My driver gets caught speeding by the police but the hotel finds a taxi for me.

At the concert, we walk on stage, start playing…and I feel relieved. All of a sudden, the piece has “entered into my blood” so to speak. It feels good to play it, my co-players notice it so they play more beautiful than ever. At the end of the piece I’m not even tired. The last, super-fast D Major scale goes like a rocket, BAM, the strings arrive right on the high note and it’s over. The audience are exalted, screaming.

It certainly felt like Divine Intervention to have this feeling at the concert. But truth is, you earn your Divine Interventions, don’t you think?

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There is a huge dinner after with the world’s finest wines, but I’m just too tired to sit and chat with people. I know I have abused my body a little the last days, so I sneak out and go back to the hotel, and I now notice my room looks like this:

Ha, I had been completely blind to see that it’s a pretty nice room…Doris, the super-charming director of the hotel, gives me a bottle of André Ziltener wine which has a unique number on the bottle. I’m thinking it’s too precious to open the bottle.

Within five minutes of entering my room I fall asleep with all clothes on the bed. I wake up in the middle of the night with a headache since I haven’t eaten. I eat a sandwich and fall asleep again. The next morning the train takes me back to Paris, and I’m there now to play for the European Ambassadors tonight. Then back home to finish editing and mixing the Beethoven CD, and back to Paris in ten days to play Beethoven Sonatas at Le Grand Salon at Invalides

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I feel great, except for a very stiff neck after too many hours at the piano. I’ll take care of that when I get home. I will also make sure to thank David Chan, not only being an incredible violinist but I also learned from him how a good Artistic Director behaves. Thanks also to Marc, the best go-to-guy I ever encountered at a festival, to the Manfred Quartet and to my mother for getting up at 2am every night when I was done recording and driving me home. And thanks, not least, to everyone who just read this.

I’ll get back to you after the Paris concert on the 9th, but I will surely get to some more posts on the Beethoven blog before that.

peace,
Per

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