I experienced the first workshop concert on 2 October 2016 as an exciting (re-)birth and the full auditorium of the Roter Salon as baptism by fire. Workshop concert No. 3 at the Lichtburg Forum, by contrast, was like a séance …
The small venue was bathed in candlelight, gently supported by subtle dimmed lighting. The audience sat so close to me I could have touched them – as there was no stage – the grand piano was placed in the middle of the room.
They listened with closed eyes. It was beautiful. When I finished my seventeen-minute long first cycle there was absolute silence. Surprising and yet too beautiful at the same time to be true: People still had their eyes closed – they found the complete silence to be part of the piece … just like I had always imagined a concert situation to be in my wildest dreams.
When the performer and the audience managed to span the entire spectrum from utter concentration, devotional attentiveness, with their senses submersed in the music as an act of being totally in the present, and holding this over the entire evening… then the concert was more than just a “success”. Then you could call it a “happening”.
Looking forward to many more workshop concerts in 2017, my warmest regards, Harald.