<<  -- 6 --  Tess Crebbin    COMING HOME

As part of his first prize, Bohorquez had received Pablo Casals' cello on loan for two years and he gave a heartfelt account of what this had meant to him. 'When Marta Casals Istomin handed the Goffriller cello to me in New York on 1 September 2000, she told me that the great master had played it for sixty years. Fortunately, I immediately had the opportunity to spend several hours alone with the instrument. When I sat by myself with it on stage in the empty Carnegie Hall, I was speaking to it in my thoughts: 'Hello, I am glad to make your acquaintance. You sound absolutely wonderful! Pablo Casals played with you for over sixty years and am I right in assuming that you have certain demands? Now I will play on you and I will attempt to meet them.'

This year's competition matched the success of the last one in terms of the enormous public and media interest and so Raimund Trenkler, summing up the last few weeks, said: 'I am very pleased with the high standard we have once again seen here at Kronberg. Part of our overall concept is to support young musicians and, for me, the most important thing you can teach them is to love music more than they love themselves. This was also the teaching credo of Casals, and later of Boris Pergamenschikow. In that spirit, and in their memory, we will continue making and teaching music here at Kronberg. Our next event will now be the masterclasses with Helmerson, Greenhouse and Hoffman in October, and the awarding of the First International Boris Pergamenschikow Scholarship during that time. A memorial concert is planned for 21 October 2004 and for this, we have a special treat to announce: Krzysztof Penderecki will be here for the world première of a cello concerto that he has written in honor of Pergamenschikow.'

Marta Casals Istomin, who is honorary president of the Kronberg Academy, paid Kronberg the ultimate compliment when she stated: 'I have been here so often over the past years that driving through the streets of Kronberg to join you all for this competition gave me a wonderful, warm feeling inside. I knew I was coming home.'