Q&A with Alban Gerhardt from Madrid 

As little advertisement for my live-streamed Q&A tomorrow at 5:30 pm CET (Madrid/Berlin) I am showing here an excerpt from a previous Q&A, answering the question about a certain ritardando in Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata - and ending the clip with a little mishap during a rehearsal in London last month in Debussy's sonata for piano and cello with my friend and wonderful pianist Steven Osborne; I played on a cello much smaller than my own, and when moving the bow from "sul tasto" (fingerboard) to "ponticello" (bridge), I jumped to far, beyond the bridge and did not manage to get back "on board" immediately. And yes, I added the same two bar of my struggle to get back onto the horse in slow-motion... 😉
In a recent poll I conducted about wether a musician has the freedom to change a certain note (in my case I played the last note of the Weinberg concerto an octave higher than demanded) or if s/he should stick to exactly what's written. Some people got even a bit angry with me for doing so, and 40% believed musicians don't have that freedom. I then expressed my surprise about the discrepancy that maybe 95% of cellists (and also the listeners) don't seem to mind that we do change the tempos, dynamics and phrasings around with major celloconcertos (Dvorak, Elgar, Shostakovich to name a few), often changing the character of a piece without any complaints. Same can be said about symphonies, chambermusic etc... If there won't be any questions I definitely will talk a bit about that to get things started :)v