Because of a shortly follow-up date Wolfgang did not unload me but parked the car with me inside close to the house in the shady wood. That was fresh air and was doing good.
In the residence of Würzburg I enjoyed at maximum the unique architecture of Balthasar Neumann! This high barock building is also included in the UNESCO list of world cultural treasures! I was to be played in the garden hall by the Jazz pianist Christoph Wünsch whom I knew from Aub already. He was playing to one half of the visitors of a congress of the ESACT (European Society for Animal Cell Technology). Tho other half got a concert-menu in the "White Hall" upstairs on the concert grand of the residence by Wolfgang. His moderation was integrating the wonderful ambiente with the theme of the congress and the music pieces played. He got standing ovations and the vongress had an adequate finish.
WAM
Immediately my working phase continued on the next day. I came to stand in the Pavillon of the Julius-Spital. On four evenings Thomas Goldschmidt and Norman Shetler would be playing all violin sonatas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (WAM) as part of the cultural weeks of the wine yard. Wolfgang made a recording with his "artificial head microphone" for a planned CompactDisc. Its name is: "Die Kunst des Ausgleichs" ("The art of balance"), meaning the perfect proportion of Mozarts compositions as well as the balance between violin and piano in the sense of the "Goldener Schnitt".
Between these concerts Wolfgang brought the Steinway C of the town from the GMD room in the theatre to the "Spitäle", which is an old little chapel used as an art exhibition room, for a vernissage. This nice place is handled by the VKU (Vereinigung der Künstler terfrankens/Association of artists of the region around Würzburg). When he brought it back he took notes in his calendar: "Given back Steinway C". Amazing that transporting a concert grand piano is so simple that you just note "given back"!
Course for keeping young!
I remained in the pavillon of the Julius-Spital until Wolfgang took me to the ninth doctors piano course. There were 3 repeaters of 10 participants. The company doctor of Porsche started from scratch and liked the new hobby because he made progress at Porsche speed! At least one "black sheep" must be in the group: This time it was a non-doctor and house-wife from Stuttgart, the sister of the lawyer who took the brown piano. She was at the party to celebrate the new piano and heard of these courses. And she is very good at the piano and plays alto recorder, too. In later years she hosted a group of three to five private students in her house for long sessions with Wolfgang who went to Stuttgart for that group every 6 weeks about.
A real senior was in that course, a doctor at age 80. He practised very concentrated and consequently and proved that music keeps young! He had been given the course for his birthday by his grandchildren who had heard about it at the rose garden pavillon. Amazing how the word is passed on.....
A psychiatrist from Munich experienced a breakthrough. In his second course he got it! His motoric coordination was becoming conscious and he had a fluent movement with good control.
another colleague had learnt by himself for years autodidactically and had achieved a high standard, so that Wolfgang´s ideas gave him a good input. He really studied Christian Sindings spring murmur very thoroughly and asked questions about fingering Wolfgang had never been asked by anybody before.
During this course Wolfgang was really stressed. One night he had to stay up because he had to accompany his young wife to hospital with an infection. That´s why he left me on the van for a while after the course.
In front of the Castle
Monday 7th June 1993 we made a spontaneous performance in the middle of the place in front of the castle in the center of Stuttgart. Street music is well organized in Stuttgart. You can play from the full hour to the half hour and then have to pause for 30 minutes and that is limited to certain points. We went to the flag rondell.
In other words we were giving away a present of several thousand bucks to Stuttgart just for fun because the coins thrown in the hat just payed for the travelling costs. According to this it makes a good athmosphere that a nearby business woman jumped to us at once after the first notes to underline that we would not be allowed to play from the half our to the full hour. If we would dare to she would call the police!
At the same time on the terrace of a nearby restaurant there was a press conference. One of the journalists saw us and came by to take a photo. His article is really nice and helped us to forget that business woman. Later we heared that also other papers had taken photos but did not tell much more about us.
Foto: Uli Kraufmann, Suttgarter Nachrichten vom 12.06.1993
Mozart-Festival-Action
On 11th June pianoplan told me about his first experience with a Steinway concert grand model D (274 cm) which he took from the music academy to the "Neubaukirche" the official church of the university of Würzburg.
The day after he brought the same piano model from the first floor of the residence to the Neubaukirche. The ride down the huge staircase of the residence with the biggest ceiling fresco in the world (about 700 square meters!) by Tiepolo was the most beautiful drive he ever made.
The stair is very little inclinated and has low steps so that in former times the ladies with their long skirts would have it comfortable to walk along. The back transport was done the same but from then on the house keeper and his boss did not want to have any pianoplans on that stair any more.
They were right because some days later when I was driving up another stair in a side part of the building and an edge of a step was breaking off. It was not entirely our fault because at that place the edge had already been repaired before and thus was weakened. We were heading for the "Fürstensaal" (duke´s hall) where the pianist Tsimon Bartò needed me to practise for his recital. Thanks god the administration did not charge us for the step.
Not every professor makes "music"
After a couple of days in the shady wood I was called on very short term for a rehearsal with the Philharmonic Orchestra of the theatre with a piano concerto. A fairly young piano professor was playing the first concerto of Beethoven for the Mozart festival and he was not really having a mature interpretation although he played "correctly". Some of the orchestra musicians agreed with me when they observed us going down the stairs after the rehearsal.
Lazy Wolfgang left me in the wood again for another coming date in some days. But he made a miscalculation: His student Huberta came for a piano lesson and he had "forgotten" me at the wood place! Since there was no piano in the house they had to go to Würzburg and make the lesson at Huberta´s appartment.....
The IHK-lady
A lady of the IHK (the chamber of industry and commerce of Würzburg) got interested in a conception Wolfgang proposed. He played something to her on me and they developped a phantasyful conception for an incentive:
The Würzburg artist Georg Rüdinger should exhibit in the IHK together with the sculptures of Anders Tinsbo. The pictures for the walls and the sculptures for the space! We moved the date of the vernissage exactly on the day when there was a general meeting of the IHK members with some important politicians present.
The president of the Bavarian SPD (Socialist party) of Bavaria, Renate Schmidt, came as a speaker. The discussion with her was so interesting and over the scheduled time that the vernissage was already over when the audience came out of the hall. Nevertheless Wolfgang played for her a Chopin study and she liked it. The audience were really astouned when he drove down the stairs with the 290 cm Bösendorfer concert grand (570 kg) in front of their eyes all alone! The lady of the IHK told him that the foyer never was that full ever before for a vernissage!
Waldbühne (stage in the wood)
Before that IHK event the transport of the 290 Bösendorfer was very interesting because Wolfgang had never transported an Imperial model. At 5.00 a.m. he started for Lichtenfels to build a side on measure for that "elephant" of the pianos with Ali Schreiner the carpenter super-specialized for piano transport features. In a couple of hours this was done and they went to the spedition Kraus & Pabst where I had been taken by him, too.
There they mounted the slide onto the piano. To do this the piano was lifted by a machine just touched at one point from under the body, the whole piano hanging sort of at one single point! But it came out that the storage room of the van was too short! So they put the piano in a diagonal position and towed it fast.
They came to the stage in Heppenheim which was more than one meter high. So they had to put an intermediary podest infront of the stage, go on that with a ramp. then put the ramp between podest and stage to make the rest of the height.
When Wolfgang came back to me he took out the whole wall between driver´s cabin and storage room of the van so that for the next transport of the Imperial the van would be long enough. ON that stage in the middle of nature the Imperial and I experienced a phantastic performance of Carmina Burana of Carl Orff with Peter Müller-Sybel as conductor.
Later Wolfgang told me that on the way down the stage he asked Ute to step on the lower end of the ramp to fix it a bit for the moment of lowering the huge Imperial. Fearlessly she stepped on the board and the huge monster piano was lowering just above her..... She is definitely a courageous girl!
At the Elbe river in Dresden
Middle of July 1993 we wnet to Dresden. The former director of the Maritim Hotel in Würzburg, Hans-Joachim Herrmann, had gone there. He had engaged us for a so-called Canaletto-court-recital in cooperation with the Dresden music festival.
Ute came with us as acompany for three days with full pension, a nice recital open-air.The day before we had a press conference. The photographers of the BILD, the Morgenpost and of the "Dresdner Nachrichten" came and took shots. Two of them went on the lawn outside the hotel with the Elbe river and the city of Dresden as background. The thirs went on the stairs with us. In the paper the photo was placed very funny right above the head of Justus Frantz - like "dancing on his head". His article was headlined with "Are you a Hansdampf-in-allen-Gassen, Mr Frantz?" (That means: Are you doing too many things and nothing more good?).
Dresdener Morgenpost vom 17.07.1993
The recital was fully booked. The weather was critical close to rain and with the extreme flexibility of the "Mobile Unit" we could decide only half an hour before the start to go outside. That inside court was very nice but the air conditioning on the roof was making a disturbing noise and distracting concentration. Organizers of open-air concerts should switch off air-condition for that time.
On the way back we passe over Leipzig to get an old piano from Dr. med. Uta Walter that she was giving at good conditions for the doctors courses. The classical buildings with many appartments called "Plattenbauten" from the era of the GDR were very original. They had to go over a staircase which was finishing so shortly in front of a window that the turnaround was only possible building a podest. Finally we went home with tha piano at my side.
Koeckert
The overnext day we came to the residence again in the garden hall. Maria Oeder-Bulitta played on me and accompanied her lover Rudolf Koeckert, the first violinist of the famous Koeckert quartet. Gooooood violin sound!
