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

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

116-117

text excerpt

The concert is certainly the most depressing of the tour. For a start the new theatre (unfinished in many details because they ran out of money) is bleak and cheerless, very cold backstage, and with a Japanese piano.... The tone seems to 'stop dead' as soon as it is produced, especially in the treble.... On days like this I envy my colleagues, who always have their own instruments with them, and never have to face the limitations of unsatisfactory pianos as I do. ... Every piano is different, many of them are not as nice as mine at home, and in every place there's a very limited time to get used to the unknown piano.

... This coldness somehow affects the whole evening. Though we do our best, there's a sense of blankness from the audience, and this is borne out afterwards... 'That was a lovely bit of music.' 'Very pleasant evening.' 'You all seemed to enjoy yourselves!' One woman tells me this was the first time she'd heard Beethoven's E flat Trio, opus 70 no. 2. I ask her what she thought of it. 'Well!' she says. 'I thought the third movement had a lovely waltzy feel.' So it does, but somehow this remark sends me home in low spirits.

excerpt from 'With Florestan in Australia and New Zealand, September/October 2001' pp. 116-117 (212 words)

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