In November it was finally time to go on tour with Leif Ove Andsnes.
I say finally because in the past couple of years the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Leif Ove have been quite unlucky: The tour where we would present Unboxing Mozart, a project that was done by Lars Vogt (he did an amazing job, but that aside) was postponed because Leif Ove was unwell. After that it was planned that we would do our first big Mozart Momentum tour through Europe, but Corona changed the world so all was cancelled.
Fortunately we were able to do the “nearly impossible”: last year in December. During a serious lockdown period in Berlin, we managed to get together and work in an empty Philharmonie to record our first “Momentum” CD. So the first steps were made, and the year 1785 was recorded.
And now it was time to play those pieces live, including two later piano concertos (1786) that would be recorded in Vienna on the tour.
We started off in Lisbon where late summer was still leaving its mark. The Gulbenkian building, in the middle of a kind of Japanese park, hosts two museums and a concert hall. With our hotel around the corner, the morning walks to the hall were very nice. Although at the entrance there was serious corona-control: temperature, hand wash and new face mask was required until we were seated.
As soon as we started playing with Leif Ove it felt as if we had never stopped playing together. It’s a very natural collaboration. He had brought with him a fellow piano player that specialised in the human body in relation to music making: Tina Margareta Nilssen. She offered us a workshop and private lessons, in which she could confront us with our physical issues. I had two lessons with her and also took part in the workshop and it was a revelation! I heard from colleagues as well that she really knows how the body works and has very good ideas about sitting down for example, a thing we mostly do in the MCO. For the rest of the tour people were sitting straight up with more focus and therefore even better sound!
If you are interested visit: timani.no
Thank you again Tina for this!
We had the luxury of staying in Lisbon for five nights, so we had a lot of opportunities to eat well at night and make long walks along the river and the sea. After three days of rehearsing we took off with the first concert, Leif Ove was on fire and the standard was set for the next two weeks!
Hamburg was our next stop, a completely different surrounding: the harbour, the big warehouses that were restored to apartments, the “Elbphilharmonie” at the end of the key like a King on his throne. Grey sky, bits of rain, industrial environment, another movie... But again what a luxury: the MCO has played often in the “Elphie”, even in Corona-times I think it is the hall where we played the most of all. Here it was time to introduce the Soprano Christiane Karg. She sang the aria Ch’io mi scordi di te? also written in 1786. How gorgeous, what a voice, I think if Mozart would be alive now he would have written this for her! As soon as we started playing, it was as if we were thrown back in time, people would say: “A real Mozart voice!”
Another nice aspect of playing with Leif Ove is that he always gives us the space to do something on our own (without a conductor). In this tour that was inevitably Mozart’s 38 symphony: the Prague Symphonie. Matthew Truscott, our beloved Concertmaster had lead the rehearsals already in Lisbon but here it was time to play it in the concert, between two piano concertos. And what a concert that was! It is always so nice to play (standing this time) with MCO and only MCO with Matthew leading and all watching him and one another, it leads to amazing energy and joy.
I think that is what the audience senses: the joy of playing.....
There was an educational side to our visit to Hamburg as well. A school class attended a rehearsal and had a Q & A session with Justin, Lexi and me with Valentina, our Education and Outreach Manager from the MCO office, a great host. The children were well prepared and sincerely interested, they asked nice questions like: “If you could meet a composer who is not alive anymore, who would that be?”
Well, the answer for us three was easy: Mozart! Just imagine.....
Our concerts with Leif Ove were getting even better shaped and more beautiful. I nearly forgot to mention that our string leaders Frank-Michael, Joel and Matthew played a chamber music program with Leif Ove on the tour as well. This made the programme MCO had for all the halls even more varied. They played in Hamburg for the first time with “viel erfolg”!
Our tour continued to Lugano, a long travel day through the mountains of Switzerland, we would arrive late but have a free morning and afternoon the next day, staying in an old-fashioned, great hotel right at the lake. Joel, Maite and Ben, three viola players convinced me to walk one of the surrounding mountains and that was really worth it, again, what a change of scenery: the blue sky, the steep and green mountains, the clear air, Switzerland at its best, what a walk!
After one great concert we went to Berlin the next day, where we played in the Philharmonie. The Symphonie was a great success and the piano concertos were ready to record during our next stop, Vienna.
So after a lovely free day in Berlin, (some went to a concert, others to a Museum, others went to do their laundry....a typical free day in one of our “Heimat” cities) we moved to Vienna. What a gift it was for us to rehearse, play AND record in the beautiful “Musikverein”. Thanks to the intendant there we had this great opportunity to record a CD in one of the most precious concert halls in the world. The recording would be live, so during the concerts, but of course, as always, we had “patching” to do. Repeat bits of the music where there was maybe a cough in the audience or a page turn in the orchestra.
After three concert nights (our chamber music team did a wonderful concert in the small hall) and one more day of patching, we moved on to Brussels. And then the news reached us: from the next Monday, the whole city of Vienna would be in lockdown again. All will be closed. How lucky have we been?? We had just left and finished the recording. It all could have been completely different!
With this knowledge we started our last three days of the tour in Brussels- three concerts in the wonderful Palais des Beaux-Arts - Bozar. As we had finished our recording and felt relieved because Corona did not catch up with us, these last concerts were fantastic! A colleague said in the break:
“Wow, we start sounding like a grown up and adult orchestra!” That said, I know exactly what he meant: we should never lose our joyful and nearly naive way of playing but the better we do that, the more grown up we sound, it is nearly contradictory haha.
So there we are: 20 days of touring, 12 concerts, 5 countries and an atmosphere that is always positive and ready to work, something that works great in combination with Leif Ove. I think we can look forward to the CD release in 2022, and hereby: Thanks Leif Ove, for a wonderful tour, we are looking forward to the next ones!
Photos Lisbon, Hamburg, Lugano and Vienna: Geoffroy Schied
Photos Elbphilharmonie Hamburg: © Daniel Dittus
Photos Brussels: © Bozar / Caroline Lessire
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The Mahler Chamber Orchestra’s travel to and from Lisbon was kindly supported by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. The performance and the installation of Unboxing Mozart in Berlin was supported by the Capital Cultural Fund.
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