Sprightly

Vienna Travel from Luzern to Vienna, uneventful. The Musikverein is the same old place, which is what is nice about it. Some of the end pin holes in the stage look like they might be a hundred and fifty years old, the kind of tradition you can put your foot on. The hall has a fantastic resonance that, if we aren't careful, we can fill with a fantastic jumble of sound. At rehearsals Haitink asked us repeatedly not to (surprise) overplay. Performing Bruckner in the Musikverein feels very appropriate somehow, although I can't say I came away from the concert liking Bruckner or understanding what he was up to any better. But if you put a pig in mud I suppose he's happy even if he can't tell you why. There is a story floating around that Bruckner, a shy and possibly troubled man, asked that the bare breasted caryatids in the Musikverein be covered. I have no idea if this actually occurred (the request and/or the covering) but I think of it whenever I play there. We performe...

Luzern Getting to Luzern turned out to be one of those magnificent ordeals arising from an almost obsessive desire to travel separately from my colleagues. At midnight, the view of Berlin from the elevated train platform was magical. The train arriving half an hour late and falling 45 minutes behind before reaching Dortmund, not so magical considering the scheduled connection time of 47 minutes. A city on a large lake in need of a new concert hall sounds oddly familiar. Only Luzern did something modern, and in my opinion, quite spectacular. Not all my colleagues like the acoustics of the concert hall as much as I do, but everyone is entitled to be wrong, I suppose. We played two programs, Mozart/Shostakovich repeated from Berlin, and then and Haydn 101 paired with (yes, again) Bruckner 7. Sunday morning, I set out to climb nearby Mount Pilatus whose summit was, as usual, hidden in clouds. I don't know the mileage of the hike – the sign says '4 hours' – but the elevation gai...

Berlin Speaking of Hindenburg, for once the German capitol city is warm and sunny. We used to have a conductor (name escapes me) who dragged us to Berlin every Easter where it seemed perpetually rainy, cold and gloomy. And that was before leaving the concert hall. Haitink is “Mr. Sunshine” in more ways than one, I guess. He seems to be back to form after suffering some sort of leg or back ailment that had him using a cane last time we saw him. The orchestra came out of vacation sounding understandably ragged at the opening rehearsal but more or less pulled together to put on a fine concert (Mozart 'Jupiter', Shostakovitch 15) at the Philharmonie, thanks in large part to the Maestro's steady hand. The Philharmonie has been underwhelming me the last few times we played there. Not sure why – the sound is clear and certainly more resonant than what we are used to, but I can't help feeling there is something a bit flat about it. The backstage canteen continues its fine tradi...

An inauspicious beginning Usually the tour starts when the plane wheels hit the ground, that little bump signaling the end of one chapter, in this case, vacation , and the beginning of another, the tour. This time is a little different, however. First, there is the business of cleaning up the past, making a few excuses so as to move on with if not a clear, at least a whitewashed conscience. The stolen violin and some other hijinks during the summer disrupted my Haiku-a-day plan, which was probably over ambitious to begin with anyway. But, in case nobody noticed, the Bass Blog has turned out to be more or less an account of failure – the large, ongoing type, as well as a series of smaller episodic shortcomings that seem to dog my every day. Think of that well known film clip, the Hindenburg disaster, played continuously in slow motion. So in those terms, failing to write a few Haiku is hardly anything to get upset about, is it? But it is time to rewind the filmstrip and begin the proce...