to my audience

As the distance from home is inexorably growing with every passing second on my flight to Santiago de Chile my thoughts are also on their way to South America. I think of the people who have bought tickets for the concert, waiting for the first violin concerto by Dmitri Schostakowitsch. The thought of this makes me very happy, and I can’t wait to be on stage. How much I would have liked to share this joy immediately with my audience all over the world! For what would we musicians be without our audience? Can you play within your own four walls all your life and be happy as an artist?…
For a while my thoughts swing round to Cologne and to a concert in March this year. For me this concert was a home match, and the excitement was in spite or just because of this greater than usually. The candles illuminating the hall of the KunstSalon reminded of the baroque period in which Vivaldi and Tartini gave their famous concerts at home. At the KunstSalon it is quite dark, but in the trembling candle flames I could imagine the excitement in the faces of the audience. What do you expect as listeners, what do you wish for? Perhaps to forget the everyday worries and let the sounds transport you into another world for a while? Into a world where time and space melt into each other and where only music reigns? And how do we know as artists whether we have fulfilled your expectations? Or not? Is the proof of an accomplished performance thundering applause or the perfect silence during the concert?
No matter how often I ask myself these questions, the feelings are very different at every appearance. Never have two concerts been completely equal. Had this ever been possible, there would have been no more creativity. Sometimes I feel already after one or two minutes the contact between the audience and me like an invisible bridge, and this is an indescribable joy. In moments like these one wants to give the listeners all the best, all knowledge and feeling one possesses as an artist. The audience seems to follow the best musicians, and a conversation develops in which both partners are equal.
Unfortunately there are also concerts in which this longed for connection is missing. How difficult it is to want to conjure it up as one feels when playing that the audience is becoming more and more distant. As if there was an invisible wall separating the people in the hall from the artist.
But even if there are worries about the future of classical music I am optimistic in this case. Again and again we are lucky to experience a fascinating, finely nuanced music by new composers. And even though the composers of the past are not among us, their music won’t die soon either. It has survived their lifetime for a long time now and remains like the light of an extinct star to bring us sadness and joy. For us who play it and for you who hear it it remains very much alive.
Dear audience, you are the most precise and sensitive measure of the creative condition of the artist on stage. And we are very thankful to you for that.
Airplane Madrid – Santiago, 4th July 2004