Sunday, 2005/11/06 Arrival in Seoul

Monday, 2005/11/07 1st Concert Seoul Arts Center (Eroica)

Tuesday, 2005/11/08 2nd Concert Seoul Arts Center (Heldenleben & Asyla)

Wednesday, 2005/11/09 Continuation to Shanghai

Yesterday we four cameramen had “off” during the rehearsal of Adès Asyla. We had the best seats in the auditorium. What a moment! Up to now I’ve only seen the musicians through the viewfinder, i.e. with everything reduced in this constrained viewfinder- world, to the scale of a lens, and the time-aperture correlation.

And now this total. No pixels. Everything real. For the first time, I feel the extent, the power of this music, without headphones and without director instructions, which sometimes pull me from the briefest of dreams to reality: “Closer to the horns, give me the timpani, now come the strings, stay with the concertmaster… ”

I look over to Anthony. He has tears streaming down his face too. It has us, this music magic. Yesterday among the audience, I discovered a 10-year-old boy who had his eyes closed as if in a trance. Is this the unifying and universal language of music? A cultural bridgebuilding? As I zoom in closer, I see his Gameboy.

”It would be nice of God, would it not / if he let me find sleep here at the Marriot“ shot through my overly-awake mind. That was at 4:30 this morning, and through the hotel windows you could tell the backwards-driving construction vehicles from the forwarddriving ones by their beeping. What are they building at night? There is already so much in Seoul. In Peking, you couldn’t even see it through the smog. There, we mastered two rehearsals and two concerts, visited the Great Wall, the Ming graves, the Forbidden City, Starbucks, the restaurant “Le Quai” across from the Workers’ Stadium… oh yes, there my old friend (Don) Huang invited us to dinner, there were delectables and sizzling things…

You can, and must forget your regular Chinese take-out around the corner after such a meal. The concert hall is full of signs with information like “Smoking and fighting is prohibited, please observe public morality in the theatre” and of all the others who have performed here besides us: “The Australian Tip-Tap Dog Dance Troupe” or “The Russia Red Hag Far East Military Song and Dance Group” or the “Air Force Blue Sky Art Kindergarten.”