This was our guest appearance in Bucharest

From 1 to 4 September, we were part of the George Enescu International Festival in Bucharest and played in the Sala Palatalui. We had works by Enescu, Shostakovich, Rachmaninov and Mahler in our luggage. And we brought a lot of impressions home with us.

Away from the stage: the outward journey

An Air Baltic plane brought us to Bucharest on time on 1 September. The tiny bottle of water we received on the flight seemed out of proportion to the two-hour flight, which was accompanied by turbulence at times.

However, this was immediately compensated for by a sumptuous, traditional Romanian dinner, which we ate in the Zexe restaurant - organised by our 2nd concertmaster George Cosmin Banica. Three long banquet tables with about twenty people each - the orchestra, the management and Paavo Järvi with his assistant conductor Julia Kurzydlak - were seated there. Apparently, people in Romania love potatoes just as much as they do in Switzerland. Potato slices and mashed potatoes were served - accompanied by various meat and fish appetisers and even more meat.

The music was also traditionally Romanian: at the centre of the live band was a cheerful and very virtuoso hand organ, the volume of which almost caused the entire room to explode. Paavo Järvi was so taken with this lively music that he got up from his seat and enthusiastically walked to the front of the band to capture some of these moments with his mobile phone camera. There were also spontaneous dance interludes from our musicians and continuous cheers for the live band. In short, this first evening in Bucharest was a blast.

On stage

Since our last performance two years ago in the Sala Palatalui, some acoustic improvements have been made. Artistic Director Ilona Schmiel points to the newly installed concert shells on the two side walls. Together with the reduction in seating - 3,000 instead of 4,000 seats - and the light-coloured stage floor, this results in "more penetrating and clearer acoustics".

The hall is like a teddy bear hugging you, said Assistant Conductor Julia Kurzydlak during the interval of the rehearsal with Alisa Weilerstein. One reason for the comparison being that the hall has a brownish-yellow colour. Today, one would certainly not opt for such a colour palette. On the other hand, the seats and the fitted carpet really did feel like a giant teddy bear. The air was hot and stuffy. No wonder, some guests fanned themselves with their fans. Unfortunately, the edge of the stage lined with real flowers couldn't do much to counteract this odour. But the blue-violet colour of the flowers was well coordinated with the colours of the festival.

A huge swivelling camera arm was used for the live broadcast. It was stationed on one of the balconies on the left-hand side. During Enescu's prelude to the opera "Œdipe" on the first concert evening, the large cameras - there were also some on stage - were still noticeable, but after that they were soon forgotten.

Backstage

Immediately after the concerts on 2 and 3 September, our musicians, management and festival participants had a lively chat. The corridors were far too narrow for the many people milling around. The area directly in front of the water machine was particularly popular. And larger instrument cases often had to serve as pseudo changing rooms.

Comments on Instagram about the two concert evenings were not long in coming: "The festival reaches new heights!", or: "Yes, there was crying", or: "Real reason for visiting Bucharest: Mahler 2nd Symphony. Just ... incredible."

Especially after Mahler's 2nd Symphony, a dense circle formed around Paavo Järvi - fans with flowers and open autograph books stood ready to try their luck, sometimes even taking a photo with our music director. At the same time, our stage technicians were already starting to pack up the instruments. The 40-tonne truck was already waiting downstairs to be loaded. We started with the double basses. Back in their huge boxes, they were transported to the ground floor using a special lift that was flush with the outer wall of the building. If you didn't know that a lift was waiting downstairs, you might have thought the instruments were going to fly out of the window - but everything went smoothly. Sixty cubic metres of instrument boxes found their way into the lorry.

Away from the stage: the journey home

The return journey on 4 September was not quite as smooth as the outward journey. It turned out that the group counters we had reserved were not even open. Conclusion: check-in took so much longer for everyone. And in the end, we landed in Zurich almost two hours late. The reason for this was thunderstorm warnings in Zurich. And at the latest when we saw the pouring rain pouring down the cabin windows, we were sure: we are back in Zurich.

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The guest performance was supported by Merbag.