Early in January, the day finally arrived when I was due to start rehearsals (in his home town) on Erwin Schulhoff's fan-tastic Piano Concerto op 43, which I adored from the moment I heard it on CD! I consider it the perfect Concerto: haunting melodies, mesmerizing sequences of fabulous harmonic effects, contaminating Jazzy rhythms, even a literally unforgettable dialogue, between the solo violin and the piano, before the exciting Coda… Advice to all pianists: have a listen! you don't know what you're missing!
Larry Foster, my loyal friend and great conductor, was as I expected, absolutely brilliant in the handling of the score - and only from thorough preparation - rightly scaling down a heavily scored accompaniment to great effect.
Two things in rehearsal amused me no-end: in trying to sort out the timing of an off-beat note, played on a 'car-horn', which always came late, Larry told the player: "try and … blow on one" …"?!… just imagine if something of the sort was said in front of a London Orchestra, Helloo: he would never live it down…! and since the orchestration in the final Coda includes all percussion players as well as everybody else, this means it gets rather loud to say the least- Schulhoff made the mistake of writing fortissimo; but in a very fast Presto, energy is plenty ! - just before he ended the general rehearsal, he told the percussions guys: "remember: in that Coda: just think about playing it and it'll be perfect" … Well … you get the picture!
Larry, I had such fun! …and thanks for the wonderful performance of Schumann's 2nd Symphony (the repeat one) you transformed those "Czechs" players… It's usually a pleasure to play a solo encore, but in the Rudolfinum's gorgeous acoustics, wow: this time, Granados' The young maiden and the Nightingale - it's become "my song", sadness, purity and passion!
Following my stay in snow-covered Prague, off to Billbao where it was time to revisit Schumann's A minor Concerto: its greatness seemed to elude me although I played often, somehow my performances were never satisfying ... It's almost a year now since I started working on it - that alone, for me, is unheard of! - and like in Chopin's Concerti, the Orchestra in my opinion, needs to participate much more fully when the piano is doing its filler-runs… Another enjoyable collaboration from friend -conductor, Latham-König, Thanks, Jan!

Apologies to the readers for getting so carried-away with technicalities and musical notions - but it made a real difference in sheer presence to the delivery: in a sense Schumann's Concerto is more a question of intense chamber-music-making or a real Symphony which features an all-important contribution from a piano obligato!

There are still a few more performances of the "op 54" very soon: in Pamplona, Lugano or Varese , either in March or April (- see Concert Diary for details).

Who knows, some of you could come and hear?! Let me know what you think, then!