Recording in Dusseldorf was a fantastic, if fairly stressful experience. We had flown over Patrick the engineer, Jeremy the producer, Yasuo the conductor and me the violinist, so there was a constant sense that if any one of us ate an unfriendly shrimp, or became ill by any other means, the whole thing would fall apart like a house of cards. By some miracle nobody did, and the week went by pretty smoothly.
As you can see from the photo below, the recording box in the Tonhalle was about half a mile up in the sky, and climbing what seemed like several thousand stairs in between takes to see if we liked what we'd just played lost its novelty very quickly indeed. The sound was wonderful in there though, a really memorable place to make a record.
Dusseldorf itself is a very interesting place to spend a few days- hundreds of Japanese restaurants to feed the massive Japanese community there, and, of course, the Schumann connection. Schumann was Music Director at the orchestra, and threw himself in the river in fact. Producer Jeremy disappeared off on a Schumann pilgrimage during a morning off, but opted not to follow in the great man's footsteps by having a swim in the river.
The pieces- Rozsa and Korngold- are two of my very favourite concertos. Both terribly difficult but great fun to play. I just wish Heifetz hadn't recorded them...
The view from the recording box(photo: Patrick Allen)
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