As I hardly ever getting phone calls, – other than scams – I didn’t answer one also but there was a message after the call. Not having many gigs in the next months, I was happy to call back because the message was about a possible concertmaster gig couple of weeks later. It was end of January, just got back from a lovely, short, New Years concerts from Athen.
This call came from the concertmaster of the Jena Philharmonie, a quite big orchestra in the lovely east German city of Jena, coincidently just a few miles from my house. He is a young Hungarian violinist who got his job in Jena last year. He explained that the contact person who gave him my number is the assistant organist in the St. Wenzel Church in Naumburg, where I played with her couple of times. Also, I met his recently married wife, also an organist at a small party last summer.
His story was interesting:
Because he had a very important show with his Trio, Beethoven’s triple concerto with a major orchestra in Budapest end of February, he was able to get free from the orchestra but there was a chance that if the other concertmaster because of illness could not work in this time frame, they would need a concertmaster on short notice.
I said OK, need only the music and they can contact me any time. So they did, soon I’ve got a message from the orchestra that they would need me for the project.
I shall mention that the program included R. Strauss Don Juan, Ibert Flute concerto, Shostakovich Symphony No. 1 and at the end of the project another concert with two additional Shostakovich works. Since the Symphony was new to me, I started to work on it and Don Juan of course not one of the easiest also, got all the music and started to prepare the bowings etc.
Few days later got another message from the orchestra, asking if I would be able to come also for the project before the one in question, just 3 days before the first rehearsal. Elgar’s King Olaf, a huge Cantata with choir and as Elgar always, not comfortable for the players at all, mostly because he wrote like it would be played on piano.
It was a hard few days of rehearsals and two performances, with an excellent choir and nice conductor, in Würzburg.
Next day after coming back from Würzburg, less than a week before the original project, their concertmaster called me, asking how the concerts were, going with the colleagues, etc. and that the chief conductor just called him with the news that he found a concertmaster and doesn’t need me for the whole coming project. He explained that the conductor, Simon Gaudenz, doesn’t want to work with a for him unknown concertmaster, and so he found one whom he knows and trusts.
I was speechless.
I thought I am having a bad dream and I should weak up. But it was the reality indeed and I could only express my disbelieve that something like this happens right here, in Germany.