Even though Klaus Wallendorf is retired now, the Philharmonic has appointed him “court poet for life” and is constantly soliciting his services. He still diligently tours the country with his solo-projects. In this book, Wallendorf has collected what has been entertaining the music world for decades: reports from the orchestra pit, poems and palindromes, introductions and transitions, his wonderfully mischievous mini-biographies of musicians, descriptions of pieces, and humorous observations about the everyday life of his fellow musicians.
If you want to know, for example, how long a horn player has to wait before coming in in Mahler’s symphonies; how to behave in the presence of the Japanese emperor; what other strange formations there are besides twelve cellists, fourteen flutists, or the Kreuzberg Nasenflötenorchester (Nose Flute Orchestra); what really happens among the Philharmonic’s orchestra members when they’re on the road; and what note in Wagner’s Lohengrin cues one of the horn players that it’s time to sneak out and heat up the sausages in the break room – Wallendorf’s collected papers reveal all this and more in a side-splitting way.
