Eckart Runge
Born in:
Heidelberg
Current centre of life:
Berlin
Instrument:
Violoncello
Second, third or even fourth instrument:
Ukulele, Recorder
My career aspiration as a child:
Astronaut, circus acrobat
This is the profession my parents envisioned for me:
Academics, in any case a “reasonable” profession, or historians like my parents themselves.
Works or concert experiences that shaped me:
Antonín Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with Mstislav Rostropovich, which my grandmother gave me on LP when I was ten, and a little later to experience the great Paul Tortelier in concert in his charismatic and eloquent manner.
Work with the greatest music-making pleasure (and why?):
Own arrangements in which improvisational elements allow a great freedom and the slow movement of the Schubert Quintet.
I would like a work for my instrument by this composer (and why?):
In my dreams I wish for a sonata by Chick Corea, I love his groovy musical language, as well as a colorful, highly emotional cello concerto by Gustav Mahler.
I would get up in the middle of the night for that:
To be able to observe the elemental volcano Stromboli from a boat from the ocean, surrounded by the black of the sky and the sea.
Special / curious own concert experience:
A concert in Buenos Aires in honor of Astor Piazzolla, where the organizer came on stage, interrupted us in the middle of playing (I suspected the outbreak of a fire or something similarly catastrophic as a valid reason to do this) to announce the late arrival of Astor Piazzolla’s widow.
My most valuable tip for the next generation of musicians:
Not to focus on doing things “right” as flawlessly as possible, but to “tell” something while playing.
That's what I wish for the future of the classical music scene:
I wish that the classical music scene survives the Corona crisis well, does not return to “business as usual”, but demands more relevance as education and perhaps even emerges strengthened from the crisis.
My next project:
The “Revolutionary Icons” release and the cello concertos by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and John Williams.
That's what I associate with Leipzig as a city of music:
Mendelssohn, Bach and the Gewandhaus.