Davos (CH), Davos Festival/Ernst-Ludwig-Kirchner Museum
New Year‘s Eve was my first time I‘ve been to Davos and now thanks to our dear friend Mister Oliver Schnyder, amazing pianist and mastermind of this year‘s Davos Festival, we got the chance to play our Winter's Journey at the Ernst-Ludwig-Kirchner Museum in Davos. It has been quite a while since we last played Schubert, so we had two intense rehearsals before we got on the plane to Zürich. . And from there we took trains to get up, up to Davos, passing mathias‘ hometown Schiers in Graubünden. The trainride was just amazing and we all spent most of the time looking out the window admiring the beautiful landscape. But also practicing Swiss German and I am very proud to say that I learned some impressive new vocabulary like „Gigampfi“ = Schaukel = swing. Ohyeah! In Davos we were picked up by a very nice young man who brought us to our hotel and then to the venue for the night: Ernst-Ludwig-Kirchner Museum, where we met Mister T, our favourite sound engineer who came straight from the Salzburger Festspiele. Oh how glad we were to have him with us – first of all because I forgot to bring the „Neumann“ and second of all because there is a looooot of reverb inside a museum and there were soundclouds swirling all around us. T did his best to tame them, to make it work, and we tried our best to adjust our dynamics to the room and stayed in a mezzoforte – area. Once the lovely audience filled the room, it got a lot better. What a charming full house it was!!! We had a wonderful time playing and enjoyed the versatility of Schubert‘s songs with our heart and souls. Hans became friends with his bass of the night and played a powerful solo in „Auf Dem Flusse“. And Joris stunned us all with his exceptional solo in „Einsamkeit“. mathias had a great time on the beautiful Steinway and played a relaxed solo in the spirit of „Rast“. Ingridi steady as a rock and at the same time in colourful motion will always rock the house whenever it‘s time for her cajon solo in our first encore „The Post“ : ). As a second encore I finally faced my fear and played my version of „Wirtshaus“ - I was very happy about it! We closed our set with one more encore! „Mut“ in our Trio version with Hans, Joris and me. We had a wonderful time, thank you to everybody who came with us on this journey and shared this experience! Now it was time to meet, greet and hug : )! I can honestly say that by now Switzerland feels to me like a second home. We all went back to the hotel and were lucky enough to still get cold beers and tasty white wine. Oliver and his beautiful wife Fränzi joined us and we had our much needed time to catch up. Your trust und support in our music truly means the world to us. Sometimes you meet people – no matter how often you see them and no matter if it‘s 5 minutes or 5 hours – you feel a strong connection that inspires and moves you deeply – that‘s how I feel about these two incredible musicians, artists and dear friends. Dear Oli, dear Franzi thank you for being the way you are!!!
It was an honour to play at this exciting festival full of young artists all over the world, thank you again Oliver for inviting us! Oh my and THANK YOU for introducing me to Lea Singer, what an honour!!!I am such a big fan of her and her books! We all stayed up a little later than usual, talking about music, communication, „englischer Seebarsch“ and sleep-walking : ). The next morning, maybe you guessed it, it was time for the „Zauberberg“ (where Thomas Mann's famous book with the same title takes place) - the beautiful area also known as "Schatzalp" is famous for its fresh healing air. And from there it was time to pack up, say goodbye and carry some of the magic back home, yours Lia!
P.S.: I would like to add that after long and intense discussions the name of Hans Strasser's bass that he played on the gone too far recording is called Carlotta Verdana!
