For this tour, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra played three concerts under the baton of Jakub Hrůša in the beautiful Basque Country, with the honour of opening the Quincena Musical de San Sebastián and the Festival Internacional de Santander.
We landed in Vitoria-Gasteiz where we had two days of rehearsals scheduled to prepare for the two different programs we were going to play: in the first one, The Hebrides overture by Mendelssohn with Chopin's Piano Concerto no. 1 and Beethoven's Symphony no. 4; and in the second, Dvořák's Te Deum, Kodály's Psalmus Hungaricus and Schumann's Symphony no. 2. Jakub Hrůša last conducted the MCO in the Canary Islands in 2017, so it was really nice to have him with us again to work on this beautiful and demanding repertoire.
After the last rehearsal in Vitoria we moved to San Sebastián and with a free evening, I went for a walk along the beach to the city centre, ready to enjoy the tasty food of this land: delicious bite-size “pintxos” served over a slice of bread, fish dishes, and the baked cheesecake of San Sebastián … amazing!
The day after it was time for the first concert in the Kuursaal Donostia, a beautiful hall right by the Zurriola beach. Both concerts were sold out and we received a warm welcome from the audiences.
Then I packed my suitcase again, this time to move to Bilbao. We stayed in a hotel there before travelling to Santander for the last concert of the tour in the Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria.
I really enjoyed playing all three of these concerts. They were all full of energy and emotions. The pianist Seong-Jin Cho played the Chopin concerto beautifully, and it was such a great experience to make music with Jakub Hrůša in the beautiful Euskadi.
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