Beginning of May Wolfgang had some stress with pianoplan (and without me). He drove to the music academy in Munich to make a big demonstration for a spedition which is specialized for piano transports. Mr Hörmann, a kind man just brought a 274 cm long piano with him to make the real tough testing! Wolfgang drives up the outside stairs without any problems and the colleagues of the spedition are very astonished...
Then came the bigger staircase until the first turnaround. Even that worked well. Just on top the part of the platform which can be pulled out for the different sizes of pianos slipped back downwards in a threatening way!!! The big big piano could get too much weight downwards and get tumblimg down! And that only because the screw which would fix this flexible part of the platform was not tightly screwed! That was the last time Wolfgang did not tightly screw this part..... This experience also resulted in a proposition to the factory of pianoplan for a technical improvement.
From Munich they directly went on to Stuttgart to meet Mr Wilfried Geyer from IBM. He was respobsible for the clients incentives and he was planning a recital with Wolfgang and some other young musicians. They were visiting the place to check all possibilities and risks. Later another visit took place. Wolfgang had never had to prepare an incentive so thoroughly like with this client. Everything was perfectly "computed". Well the top friends of the IBM direction of south-west Germany would come, all VIPs with "top security level". It´s a pity that you might be in danger and need protection for doing a good job.
The next day the most exciting thing was the delivery of an upright computer piano to a client of Wolfgang. He is building houses and started playing the piano from scratch. He was very reasonable to buy a good piano at once to learn even quicker. Even with such a sophisticated learning instrument no singel note was given for free and Günther had to study hard in his rare free time to get along.
Rose Garden Pavillon
Once a friend came to the rose garden pavillon and the two played some music pieces by sight reading. Since there were few visitors coming to this "spring show" they could make mistakes without any problems and they would not have to expect the audience to throw with tomatos......
A beautiful moment for Wolfgang was one morning when a big group of wheel chair drivers were passing by. They were really happy about an extra classical recital which they otherwise rarely would have had the possibility to enjoy.
On 19th May I was loaded again and brought to Aub for the 3rd doctors piano course. Wolfgang preferred to pre-pone this transport so that he could play on the spring show on thursday and directly go to Aub from there without the action of a transport.
On wednesday the whole class of Mr Rudi Schmitt came to the pavillon to make themselves familiar with the computer piano. Wolfgang had sent about 200 invitations to all piano teachers in the surroundings of Würzburg, including detailed prospect material. He had offered free workshops to them and their classes to experience a modern teaching feature. But what feed-back did he get? Only two teachers came with their students! Is that modern teaching? Or what are they doing with their students?
Hobby-Pianist with amputated finger end
So on thursday evening the 3rd piano class was beginning. This time Wolfgang had been assisted by Dr. med. Johannes Kommoss who had brought the idea to continue the courses. The participants could distribute their three lessons freely over the two teachers, two lessons with one teacher and one with the other. The advanced players went to Wolfgang.
There was one medicine student (standing shortly before the exam called "Physicum"), Heidi Eckrich, who played a big bunch of repertoire at highest technical level so that the others wer astouned! Working with her was fun, of course.
Also the "evolution" to get that far was very interesting, how everybody tried to get there. One colleague of Wolfgang, Dr. med. Wolf-Jakob Neff could even succeed with an amputated end of his fourth finger of his right hand! Using the "Ellenberger rolling technique" he could realise pure scales in the Sonatine op. 49 No. 2 in G majos by Ludwig van Beetoven. Before the course he would not have believed it...
All doctors liked very much to play on me after the teaching marathon of each day. They played until late at night. At two a.m. a neighbour complained about the noise. I was situated in the foyer at the basement with thin windows to the back yard where the other houses could get the noise. But the concert hall equipped with an old Steinway colleague has double windows and a good acoustical isolation. They could play all around the clock there without disturbing anybody. This experience with the neighbours had the consequence that for the next courses I was setup in the dining room which faces towards the market place where nobody is disturbed.
One of the doctors played entertainment music very well, I liked this as a relaxing change: Not always classical music! Many of them had big fun playing with four hands. Especially the immortal Anton Diabelli with his "melodical pieces for four hands" had success. Wolfgang knew these pieces from his first piano lessons and still likes them after 28 years like at the beginning. One lady doctor who was very timid could be motivated to play in a more extroverted way through these pieces. Freely after the motto of the famous pianist Walter Gieseking: "´Rin in die Fresse und drauflos!" ("hit in the face and go!"). That´s from an anecdote when he was asked how he managed to play the strong chords at the beginning of the Tschaikowsky concerto, if he did it with his wrist or from the arm or with what technique.....
The psychiatrist Kurt Eichinger from Cham was participating his second time. He was one of the painters of that little book "handbook of the Ellenberger method" from the first course which had phantastic caricatures.
There was also a lady doctor from eastern Germany, a wonderful fact after the union of east and west Germany.
With his assistant Johannes and the participants were rising
a lot of discussion about the "right technique" of piano playing.
Onelike to play more intelectually, the other more physically, another more from
the fingers.....
If twelve specialists are in one place you get 13 opinions!
Between two BMWs
On Friday night Wolfgang had an additional job. In the BMW store of Kitzingen there was a promotion of a new 8-cylinder-engine after the motto "8th Symphony". To demonstrate this in the event a Seiler grand piano from the local piano factory was setup between two BMW cars nicely positioned a little diagonal in a row. In this constellation the music would inforce the sales message. A concert menu was done with a sequence of music pieces and dishes with moderation in between. Before the main dish the shop owner presented the new enginge and started it to make the audience listen to the sound of the 8th symphony.
One table of sports-fans did not really want to listen to the music and chatted during the first pieces. So after some fruitless direct hints during the moderation Wolfgang used an old trick: At the beginning of the moon-light sonata by Beethoven after the moderation he hesitated to play until the people who liked to listened had stopped that group by making "shhhhhhhhh!".
The 2nd maire
Monday night finally I came back home. Wolfgang told me about a visit of the 2nd maire of Würzburg, Dr. Fuchs, in the rose garden pavillon. He is in charge for culture -by the way pediater- and looked at the sculptures of Anders Tinsbo placed around the pavillon and listened to some music pieces.
They talked about the project ClassiCulturCentrum in the Main Mill (a place right next to the old stone bridge in the very center of Würzburg). There are rooms which had not been used for years and Wolfgang had made a proposition to the city of Würzburg. But until something moves in that poitical field....... Quite a shame for the culture in Würzburg that even years after this initiative of Wolfgang the rooms were still empty!
To exhibit the sculptures of Anders Tinsbo was a spontaneous idea of Wolfgang with the scope not to make "narrow-minded" culture but integrate the nice surrounding of the pavillon in the concept of his event. Anders is the best-known sculpturist of Denmark of his time. His mentality can be described with one of his well-known sentences: "I do not abstract - I concentrate".
He had a phantastic "inner view" of the things, of the forms and colours and transforms it to timeless creations which guide the art lover to his inside and stimulate his phantasy to interpret it. Whenever Anders was asked if his sculpture meant this or that he answered: "Right!" because he knew that art is created inside the viewer!
For his action in the rose garden Wolfgang had just called him in Copenhagen and said he could exhibit four to seven sculptures for seven weeks if Anders brought them. Just one week later Anders came with his car fully packed with precious sculptures. For two days they looked for material for sockets and finally found some raw cement stones which would make a nice contrast to the perfectly finished sculptures.
Anders defined the prices as low as possible for a province town like Würzburg. Not even that was enough motivation for the Würzburg community to make one single buy! Well at least many of the visitors really enjoyed the beauty of these sculptures. That was worth the effort!
