Page 248 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

beginning is among the easiest bits of the whole piece! It’s not easy at all, but compared to
what comes later, I’m not afraid of the beginning. I’m happy to start right away because if
you sit there forever, you start thinking and getting nervous, which is not a good thing.”

“For me the working process was very interesting”, Chin interjects, “because often the artist
and composer will have conversations and contacts, but with us it was not like that. I just
wrote the piece to the end, and I delivered, and he delivered his playing. It was extremely
professional, and there was not a need to change anything because of his technique. I wrote
what I wanted, and he played it at the premiere by memory. I couldn’t believe that a human
being could do that!”

At this point, Gerhardt has a confession to make. “This is the biggest shame of my life,
because I was big headed, and I got lost three times – I was not happy. The most beautiful
and difficult part in the last movement, which is like 80 seconds, is very wittily written and
difficult to play. It is probably the 80 seconds I have practised most in my life, and I
completely missed them in the world premiere. I’m so grateful that I have had 30, 40 more
times now to play it. For me that is the biggest thing. I have not played so many world
premieres, but each one is the worst performance – it always gets better. You need to give it
a chance to grow – not with the memory slips, but the piece settles. With this piece the more
I play it the more beauty and intensity I discover, and the more I understand it. There is so
much to understand that you cannot grasp it all at first sight.”

He is relishing bringing the piece to the Aldeburgh Festival. “I am very happy to play it
there, after 15 years and having premiered it with the same orchestra. It will be a
completely different performance, and I would bet my life it will be a much better one!”