Aurora Chamber Music

Reflexions……on the long way home today I was driving through the deep forests of ’middle-south’ Sweden in a fantastic winter-weather. Instead of turning left in the Målilla-junction, I spontaneously decided to confront a sleepy little town where I once grew up, cannot remember when I saw this place last time……Drow past the place where the music school once was and where my fantastic first cello-teacher told me where and how to put down my 1st finger…. Stopped by the house and saw from outside my old room where I practised 4-6h a day when I was around 10-11 years old. God, never practised like that ever since.

Funny, strange and sometimes not so little nostalgic how you can remember things so precise; how you can feel the smell of your old tennis-racket ’Dunlop Maxply-Fort’ that is gone since 25 years – just by driving past some old tennis-court where you used to train tennis at the same time as Björn Borg was winning his first to Wimbledons…..I also today remembered the dreams I started to nurge very soon after I started to play cello, how I told my parents friends that ”I will be a cello-pedagogue”. I can still trace that feeling in my body, that to be a cello-pedagogue must be the finest you can be…..This has a lot to do with Lars-Erik, my first teacher. I felt lost and missed my grandfather greatly when we moved from Swedens north in the early 1970’s. Lars-Erik came from the same area in the north and filled in with a similar kind of poise and grandeur as my grandfather had.

What a difference it makes to have someone really great to look up to.

Anyway, all this memories and old feelings came to life today – and I felt so strong why I am doing what I am doing, and how lucky I am doing this. Exactly this spirit is living and breathing through Aurora today. It can be the most beautiful suttle sound from my wonderful cello from last night, or the superior happiness that students from the whole world wants to come to me & Ola in Aurora….guys, the rush before a deadline is addictive…..)))

Imagine…..if Girolamo Amatis son Nicola Amati also would have died when the plague was hitting hard on Cremona in 1630…..

The art of violinmaking is told to have started with Nicola’s grandfather Andrea, 1511 -1577. He passed it on to his two sons Antonio who left the building in 1607, and Girolamo who died in the plague in 1632…..another early giant Magginid vanished when the plague came to Brescia in 1632…..

So, left was only Nicola.

Thank God he got such a remarkable long life!! he became 88 years old and passed away with a smile in 1684. He had then plenty of time not only to make many of the most amazingly beautiful instruments there is, but also time to pass on the art of violinmaking to guys like Antonio Stradivari, Andrea Guarneri, Fransesco Ruggieri, Giovanni Battista Rogeri, and others.

Another young apprentice from Italy’s south in Naples, studied and worked with Nicola Amati and later Antonio Stradivari; his name was Alessandro Gagliano, the father of the Gagliano dynasty. One of Alessandros sons, Nicolo got four sons, two of them were Guiseppe & Antonio.

In front of me here in my living room, and on the picture to the right is my cello, built in Naples 1796, by the brothers Guiseppe & Antonio…..their grandfather Alessandro learned from Nicola Amati, Nicolas grandfather Andrea was the founder of the violinmaking tradition…

Again, Imagine…..if Girolamo Amatis son Nicola Amati also would have died when the plague was hitting hard on Cremona in 1630…..would there have been someone else….? Or……no one…..what would have been then?

There’s so much you want to fix and we have so much exciting Aurora things on the drawing table.
Lots of great artists, festivals and 1000 details, all to be packaged into final understandable  concepts.

All this inspiration and job makes me crazy. Also all the undelivered “fantastic” ideas that are just gnaw at the conscience
It is as difficult as it is fantastic, and wonder if I will make in the end.
In addition to all this fun, I’ve just become a father and Edvin (my son) has a completely different concept of time than I am.
Edvin is fierce and whip me into better discipline which in itself was about time;)
The love and energy he gives me all the time is probably exactly what I need now to be able to produce even better. … I get crazy of all positive around me … ..
Now I have to start focusing on the Aurora Spring Festival April 23 to 29 and creating some funky ads for these concerts and artists. … I have like 8 minutes for that before Edvin wake up and demands 101% attention again.
Dear friends – I hear and see you soon I hope (if Edvin allows it;)

Kind regards – Ola

http://www.aurorachambermusic.com/

Coming down to London from yet another long residency period in the Scottish granite city of Aberdeen, I met my parents a Friday night in New Eltham, 20 minutes west of Kings Cross, where the Simms family were hosting me and my parents.(Even if my mothers annual christmas card is the only contact with them these days, I consider them old friends of mine since a few turns for William Pleeth in the early 90’s.) Using cricket as a completely non-understandable subject, the John Cleese look-a-like, Don, took good care about my of course totally denyingly nervous father. My mother kept her mood flat while ironing my shirt for next day.

Wigmore. Finally we got our Wigmore debut. And a real one, a Saturday night concert, wow!!

This is now 17 years ago and things were different then, were they not? Come on, cellphones were something totally out of reach expensive, computers at home? well, no…..flying was still expensive…..anyhow, no shadow on present day, but I think things were just a little bit more….hmm, not so much ’totally within reach’ as it is in todays instant communication society. Agree?

Of course it is deeply personal, but I think all performing artists recognise the sometimes killing anxiety you can have before a performance, it can be weeks before or the few hours just before. Luckily for me it always, well almost always, goes away just before I go on stage. Of course in my quartet, with 4 commited but yet totally different individuals, the whole range of classical behaviour was at display; Walking on and off jawning, hiding in the toilet doing stuff, taking symbolic cover in a corner of a room, smoking non-filter Gauloises outside…So, after capturing the tremendous atmosphere of the legendary green-room, and after yet another disastrous dress-rehearsal…we went on stage – and played like Gods together.

This is a wonder, one of the strongest experiences; how we almost always came together in the music, in the love for each other.For 2 x 45 minutes letting all personal issues aside, finding back to the root, why we got together at first, why we sacrificed so many other things to travel 8-9 months around the world together, of which living 5-6 months a year in Aberdeen, Scotland at the University of Aberdeen.

We had a full house this Saturday night, fantastic atmosphere, we felt like kings – sorry, ancient nordic Gods….))) The concert was a success, standing ovations before interval, several encores, and usual and to the loud amusement from the crowd – our wonderful Mr Magic 1st violin threw himself off the chair on to the floor playing a crazy swedish little piece…

After the concert the Swedish ambassadeur held a reception for us and 200 invited people. All our parents, girlfriends, some Swedish fans, the Aberdeen delegation. The widow of Peter Schidlof Margaret and Norbert Brainins wife Katinka came together telling me it was as in the old days of the Amadeus quartet…chills down the spine….I remember the incredible happiness that evening, the following super-review we got in The Times is nothing compared to the surreal feeling of having a smoke with my father outside the embassy slightly round under the feet, and letting the guard go down while silently embracing one of my colleagues from the quartet, all is forgiven.

Proud? Yes, we were proud because we had so many dreams that we were working for very hard. We share so many beautiful moments together, and noone can ever take that away from us even if we in the end unevitably could not keep the group together. Not one day passes without me thinking of these days with the quartet. Thank you guys.

A famous 1st violinist from an older generation, who played quartet for 39 years once told us that ”- playing quartet is the most important thing you can do with your life, you are devoting your life and time to the peak of the humanity.” This is of course a deeply personal view, but nevertheless this devotion and effort deserves respect, and you guys who have touched this repertoire can maybe get the direction.

I am blessed that these experiences and dreams, the love for the repertoire, the phenomenal kick of playing together now continues and have a life through Aurora Chamber Music./Per.