It’s funny how it’s possible to feel a little lonely in a city the size of New York. There are so many people and yet it is always at this point in the tour when my thoughts turn to home. Don’t get me wrong, I love being here, it’s just that sometimes I wish my family were here too. It has to be said that technology makes keeping in touch much easier. It isn’t so long ago that I remember queueing for the pay phones in the hotel lobby – now there are no pay phones in the hotel lobby. However the best thing these days is Skype. Now I’m sure that all my readers are hip young dudes and know what this is, however for the benefit of the technologically challenged amongst you I shall explain briefly. Skype is a little computer program that allows your computer to become a telephone, you actually talk at the screen and the person you have ’skyped’ hears you from their computer speakers. As it is done over the internet, and we have free wifi, it means you can talk for a long time without cost. Brilliant. It gets even better. You can also see the people you are talking to and they can see you too-its just like Star Trek but without the captains log. My kids get very excited when I phone home as to them, all of a sudden, dad is actually in the computer screen talking to them; they get to show me the stuff they’ve done at school, my daughter shows me cuts on her knees and all the other trivial things of family life which take on enormous importance when you aren’t there.

I thought I would skype just around tea time yesterday. Now picture this, my daughter, who is waiting for her tea is playing with big cook, little cook on the BBC website; they are making cyber bread which I am told she has just put in the oven. My daughter guards her time on the computer fiercely as she has to share it with her two bigger brothers who of course try to dominate it. So as I said, she is sitting happily playing when all of a sudden my face appears on her screen, automatically closing down her bread making program. I can at this time see her in my laptop screen.

“Hello darling, it’s daddy, how are you? Are you being a good girl, I’ve missed you”

It’s at this point that she screams and starts having a tantrum (She’s 5), but manages to say,

“Oh dad, I’ve waited ages to play on this and now your head’s stopped my bread and it’s not fair.”

She then ran off in a huff.

I guess that’s a good thing that she isn’t missing me as much as I am missing her. Anyway, she did regain her composure and we did have a chat later on which made me walk around NYC with a spring in my step, not feeling so lonely anymore.

I felt very lonely again today, although in a room full of about 200 people. It was on stage in the concert at the Lincoln Center. This might strike you as a little odd. Tonight we played Das Lied, some of you may have heard it in London. Typically for Mahler, he orchestrates the huge forces so that at times the singers are pitted against the full force of the LSO and at other times he thins the texture so that one solo line weaves around the soloists. I have one of those lines and boy, does it feel lonely.

I have noticed the sensation before when playing Prelude de l’apres midi; the silence surrounding you is deafening. When we rehearsed Das Lied, it was the first time I had played it in my life. This is scary when Haitink is standing in front of you- I mean, he knows how its supposed to go for goodness sake. I had done my homework and the solo cadenzas with the mezzo fitted. If you don’t know the bit I’m referring to, it is a couple of bits which just involve the cellos holding a low note very quietly indeed and then the flute and mezzo weave a sinuous thread around each other until just the flute is left to gradually descend into nothingness. It can be a spectacular moment, but is absolutely terrifying to pull off in concert. The reason being that you don’t realise how lonely it can feel until there are 200 people watching and listening and suddenly the orchestra is still, hardly daring to breathe. You don’t notice in rehearsal, people are moving around, coughing, writing things in their music; you know, it takes a lot of effort to actually be quiet, and it never happens until the show. It was this evening with the polished hush of Avery Fisher as the 4 bars before my bit gradually became almost inaudible, the silence pressed in on my ears and I felt totally alone. Its that oppressive silence where everything around you seems to stop. It’s a bit like when you wake up early in the morning – it’s quiet, but just normal quiet. You can hear the leaves on the trees, the cars going past and life humming away in the background. That is like the rehearsal. And then there are those mornings when you wake up early and there has been a heavy snowfall – a really deep quiet. The snow seems to absorb the sounds of the cars and leaves, and until you open the curtains, you can’t be sure that someone hasn’t removed the life outside your window. That is what it feels like before I play the cadenzas – everything goes quiet and all my colleagues around me don’t move or breathe in case they make a noise – there is a brief pause after the descending scale and then we are off again to the end.

It’s a wonderful, lonely moment. One of many for me in New York City.