With Florestan in Australia and New Zealand, September/October 2001

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

110-111

text excerpt

In the evening, the hall is packed for our first concert - over a thousand people are there. The acoustics are splendid, and apart from a slight feeling of struggling with the heavy keys - which, to my chagrin, make me miss a few crucial notes in the opening line of Beethoven's Trio, opus 1 no. 1 - the concert goes very well. We've agreed that I should introduce the Fauré, and before I do so, I tell the audience that it is a pleasure to be playing our very first concert in Australia, though, as they can imagine, this hasn't been the easiest week to jump on a plane and travel to the other side of the world. At this, there's a spontaneous burst of emotional applause from the whole audience, which Anthony later says 'was rather wonderful'.

This Australian audience looks and behaves very much like a British audience - that's to say, predominantly older folk, and reserved though warm in manner. I'm conscious of our style being highly refined and 'European' - how this asserts itself I don't know, but I sense a kind of surprised attentiveness in the audience, who are so focused and silent that we realise they don't often hear this kind of playing. Whether it's the style, the quality or the intimacy that intrigues them, or whether they are simply puzzled by the whole occasion, I can't tell.

excerpt from 'With Florestan in Australia and New Zealand, September/October 2001' pp. 110-111 (233 words)

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