Though I was lucky not to be present at that evening. During the top-act with the ballet dancer something extraordinary happened.

Already the preparation was very original: The stage was covered with some rubber surface for the dancer. An old trick of ballet dancers is to scrub the rubber surface with one or two bottles of Coca-Cola so that it would have just the right degree of stickyness when the dancer would dance on her tips!

The climax of the choreography would be in the slow movement when the beautiful Thran Thi Mai would step from the stage on the closed lid of the piano beside the stage and soon make a full spagat! In that situation I would not have been able to play or at least my sound would have trembled a lot! For gods sake they took the hotel piano. Seemingly it has never happened in the ballet history that a dancer has made a spagat on top of a piano. The audience was enthusiastic not only for the enchanting presence of Thran Thi Mai from Cannes.

Foto: CCC

She had covered her best friend, Isabel Seabra (a primaballerina of the Scala of Milano) who had to cancel the appointment because she had to cover the first cast of a premiere in the Scala. Well maybe it will work out another time with Isabel. Thran Thi Mai was very similar to the style of Isabel, both a very gracile body and very spiritually expressive dancing.

3rd of February Wolfgang presented me to his parents who were visiting Würzburg coming from Hamburg (500 km). They noted at once that Wolfgang could express much more sensitively on me than on another piano he had given a recital the evening before.

That rises the old question: Must a pianist be able to play on any piano or does only a certain piano make possible to express the finest things?

I well believe that a pianist with an universal technique will be able to play on any instrument without being dependant on a single model.

But there are huge quality differences between the brands, so that some losses of quality cannot be counted as weakness of the pianist but are caused by the piano. And so it is with a lucky partnership if a good piano meets a god pianist and they can perform in harmony. You should be able to forget that the music is passing through a material instrument. Music should be perceived in the heart of the listener to a higher vibration; the imagination of a different world will be made possible by the music.

Well, back to trivial things: Wolfgang has not done a lot to get a house for me to practise regularly. We also had another couple of months' time to get out here from the former office of the wine yard. But finally he had put two announcements in the paper at a friday and saturday. Friday night somebody had phoned and they had made an appointment for Saturday morning.

His announcement text was: "Concert pianist looks for little house or garden house for undisturbed practising" just telling directly the biggest problem for pianists research of an appartment or house! The first man kindly showed his week-end house in the area of Unterleinach north from Wuerzburg. But the driveway was much too inclined to be able to load and unload me without danger.

Just at the moment when Wolfgang came back home into the door the phone rang another time. Another man just in the same area offered his week-end house. They scheduled a meeting right away, Wolfgang turned round, drove to the place (right opposite to theplace seen before!) and got a contract next Saturday!

He liked the landscape there anyways from other visits. WOW! We finally have a home to live and work! And we can make music all around the clock without disturbing anybody!

The way from the street to the door had two parts of stairs and would have to be improved a bit yet. But he concept of the place was fitting to my needs of secure transportation. Though there were stairs they could be overcome easily with my friend pianoplan.

Until the beginning of the contract there was some time left so that we had some activities before. Once Wolfgang put a gourmet setup on my music rest and made photos from all possible viewpoints. This was the try to offer the magazine "Essen & Trinken" (eat & drink) a photo fitting for the theme "concert-menu" what I have explained in a former chapter. The photo was not bad but they made another one in the Palais-restaurant of Maritim Hotel with a nicely decorated background. It was published with a detailed undertitle but got only three requests for shows without a single booking!

Foto: Essen & Trinken 10/1992

On 1st of March 1992 wolfgang gets the key to the new week-end house. Because he has so many dates he can only bring me to Leinach on 15th March.

Rose Garden Pavillon

Before that he makes ready about 100 invitations for piano teachers in the surroundings of Wuerzburg. They are invited to come with their whole classes to a cude Pavillon in a Wuerzburg park and meet a relative of mine, a Yamaha-discfluegel.

We Boesendorfers also have a computer piano -Wolfgang made his first compact disc with one of them-  I'll tell you about that another time. The Yamaha-discfluegel are much better to use for pedagogic purposes that's why they were doing workshops for everybody in that pavillon.

Foto: Heußner, Main-Post vom 06.05.1992

With such a computer piano you can record and replay at once seeing the keys move precisely like you have played before.

This usually provokes two types of reaction:
1) Help! The machine kills the art!
2) .... I can sit in front of it and pretend to play.

No, don't be afraid: The technique should be a useful complementation for artistic work with yourself. It is very effective to make a self-control with half of the tempo, seeing the keys move and having the same tonality. Thus I can analyze much deeper the character of my movements and recognize and eliminate mistakes I never could discover before. Though you must be careful: Your mistakes may appear in front of you like an abyss!

That's ideal to accompany singers. They record it once with their accompanists and can replay it at the push of a button. Even with down transposition if they are "indisposed".
Of course that is less flexible in the tempo but helps for practising.

Apart from that you can play with four hands with yourself. Another possibility to practise without your partner having to be present at all rehearsals.

At a festivity day Wolfgang wants to go in a restaurant in the city butmost restaurants are closed. At last he finds one and even meets two friends there, Margrit and Margaretha. After their lunch they develop an interesting free-time program. First they visit me and listen to a concert, then they go in the cinema. See how you can make culture just like that.

Then our transporter arrives in front of a printing store. Then three men begin to fix the logo of ClassiCulturCentrum all around the van and even on the roof. It says "Mobile Einheit - Konzertpianist und Fluegel" (Mobile Unit - Concert Pianist and piano).
It takes them full four hurs to finish that job. There is also a neat keyboard around the car...

Foto: CCC

On Sunday a very nice visit is coming: The chief conductor of the Wuerzburg theatre, Jonathan Seers is coming with his wife, the soprano Carmen Fuggiss. They like my sound and the touch of my keyboard and it is planned to make me play in the new series of town hall concerts. My hope is to bring some positive vibration in the big meeting room where the politicians fight with tough arguments normally....!

The same evening Wolfgang drives to Berlin with his old Volkswagen bus. He can sleep for several hours in front of the trade show ground and visits the international tourist trade show in the morning.

There he meets with Manfred Pahl, a specialist in senior touristics. They visit a lot of stands of Manfred's business partners and plan on some joint-venture with recitals in context of senior-travels. Seems as I have to expect some international jobs. But I tell that later on........

Another two days later he drives to the Frankfurt music trade show, the biggest show of that kind in the world. There he tries to get good connections.