By Asni
I’ve always had a suspicion that Wellington is really the navel of the universe, and now I have proof. The other day downtown this huge poster caught my eye: a big reddish cello, and half hidden behind it a young-ish man in black and white. The caption read Alban Gerhardt and the NZSO.
I’m sure you’ve seen those if you’ve been downtown Wellington lately. Or Napier, Hamilton, Auckland for that matter, which are the next stages on his tour. Why did that strike me as slightly surreal? Well, the last time I saw Alban was at high school, more than 20 years ago, in what was then still West Berlin in the mid-1980’s.
He was just a grade or two younger than me, and I have clear recollections of him being the undisputed star of our annual school Christmas concerts. The only serious competition, at the time, came from his younger siblings - three sisters and a little brother, all of them very musical. Perhaps that’s not so surprising, seeing that their father was a long-standing member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and their mother, an opera singer.
I also remember the dedication he had to his performance, even then: on one memorable occasion it was his turn to go on stage, but he was nowhere to be seen. A flurry of hectic search activity revealed that he had been practising backstage and gotten so wrapt up that he clean forgot to go on stage! This doesn’t seem to have changed much: When I contacted him he was happy enough to meet up for a beer and we spent a fun evening catching up with each other, but he firmly declined my offers of a sightseeing tour on the grounds that he had to work on a new piece for a concert in a few week’s time, and didn’t want to have to do it while at home with his family – time that is evidently precious, given his full-on touring schedule.
I have to admit that I had been entirely unaware of Alban’s rising musical star until I saw his posters plastered all over Wellington. I then brought myself up to speed with his career through his website, www.albangerhardt.com. He has been circling the globe as a prolific and highly respected solo cellist for quite a few years now, playing with many of the leading orchestras in four continents, and I am surprised that I never knew of it. There even seem to have been a couple of near-misses in our respective schedules, back when I was still touring internationally myself, though on a much more modest scale.
This is, more than anything, an indication of how far away I have come from the youthful classical music addict that I was back in my school days in Berlin, when I’d attend opera performances and orchestra concerts several times a week, if I could manage. A shared experience – when I met Alban we started to reminisce about the seat numbering scheme at the Berlin Philharmonia, which after all these years I can still remember in considerable detail. He, being the son of one of the Philharmonics, more or less grew up in that hall. It had never occurred to me at the time that being able to soak in world class musical performances on a weekly basis was a very special privilege – until I started to live in other places.
All this was brought back to me forcibly when I went to see Alban and the NZSO perform last Friday, and then again on Saturday night. I was expecting it to be good – after all, I had already heard him perform more than twenty years ago – but I was quite blown away by the quality of forthright, unfussy musical intelligence that came through in his interpretations of Haydn’s beautifully lyrical D Major Cello concerto and Prokofiev’s outrageously crazy Sinfonia Concertante (written in collaboration with Mstislav Rostropovich). That, and a mastery of the very considerable technical demands of this repertory so complete that it seemed like he was just having a friendly musical conversation with the orchestra and the audience, rather than performing the wild gymnastics that are all too often associated with “virtuoso solo performance” - particularly when people play Prokofiev. The rest of the audience at the Michael Fowler centre appeared to be equally impressed, and on both evenings he rewarded the sustained applause with a performance of a piece for cello solo – Bach on the first night, Rostropovich on the other.
The NZSO under British conductress Julia Jones rose beautifully to the occasion. At times, particularly in the slow movement of the Haydn concerto and the scherzo of the Sinfonia Concertante, it achieved a unity with the soloist which is usually reserved for chamber music performances – or rock bands! Julia Jones’ interpretation of Schumann’s fourth symphony, which rounded off the programme on Friday, was full of energy and made an almost over-familiar piece appear in a new and dramatic light.
It was preceded by the world premiere of Martin Lodge’s “Winterlight” for bassoon and orchestra – a short atmospheric piece which shows off the unusual solo instrument to its best advantage. The piece was commissioned by the NZSO for their former principal bassoonist, Preman Tilson, who has recently taken up a position at the Lyric Opera in Chicago but will still be spending part of his time in New Zealand. A very sweet and appropriate parting gift!
Less convincing, to my ears at least, were the French impressionist pieces that concluded the programme on Saturday. While the orchestra captured the bright fairy-tale airiness of the flute, harp and celesta sounds in Ravel’s “Ma Mere L’Oye” beautifully, the piece suffered from a few problems in the violin section, which continued in Debussy’s descriptive “La Mer” – a musical painting of the sea, which completed two evenings of mostly outstanding orchestral and solo performances.
To me personally, the most heart warming aspect of these concerts was to be able to witness not only what an outstanding musician my former schoolmate has become, but even more so, what a modest, down to earth and outright nice person he has remained. Taken together with his utter dedication to mastering his instrument until technical limitations seem to become irrelevant and he can let the cello sing or speak or rave just as the music requires, this is what shines off the stage when he performs.
More information
Alban Gerhardt’s website and blog
Alban Gerhardt’s upcoming performances in New Zealand:
July 29, 2008 at 8:00 PM Napier — Municipal Theatre Haydn Cello concerto in D Major with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under Julia Jones + Schumann 4th Symphony, Lodge “Winterlight”
July 31, 2008 at 8:00 PM Hamilton — Founders Theatre Haydn Cello concerto in D Major with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under Julia Jones + Schumann 4th Symphony, Lodge “Winterlight”
August 1, 2008 at 6:30 PM Auckland — Town Hall Haydn Cello concerto in D Major with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under Julia Jones + Schumann 4th Symphony, Lodge “Winterlight”
August 2, 2008 at 8:00 PM Auckland — Town Hall Prokofiev Sinfonia Concertante with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under Julia Jones + Ravel “Ma Mere L’Oye”, Debussy “La Mer”
Asni used to play the harp professionally but eventually got tired of being a nice girl and found more interesting things to do. She now runs a website www.asni.net, and completed the Diploma of Multimedia at Natcoll a short while ago. At the moment she is looking for work in the industry, and has also recently released her second cd album Travels in Middle-earth.