Embarrassing moments at the piano? Well, I recently gave a complete performance of Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum and embarrassed myself by failing to play any wrong notes.
Hats off! What an artful allusion to E.E.Cumming's famous poetic homage to Sorabji and indeed a fine example of intertextuallity. Now, let's see if I can recall its first lines correctly:
any wrong notes and some right notes
lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his OC
...
(It's all fake, of course)I can report an embarrassing moment from my days back in school. It was my first performance there with my family, friends and teachers among the audience and I was as nervous as one can be on such an occasion.
I had chosen to play two pieces by Henry Cowell after the break,
The Tides of Manaunaun and
The Aeolian Harp, in that order—unfortunately, in that order.
The Aeolian Harp requires some fumbling and plucking inside the piano and one should mark some of the dampers in order to find the right strings to pluck during the performance. I had cut some sticky notes to size and had stuck them onto the dampers of the keys in question during the break. Now, while I was playing
The Tides of Manaunaun with its gradually increasing clusters (in size and volume), and as more massive waves of sound left the instument those stiky notes left it too!
There was of course no time to put new marks inside the piano between the pieces. So, I did my best—which wasn't much, as I have to admit—to pluck the right strings, standing in front of the keyboard, with a deep red face, the right foot on the right pedal, the right hand holding chords, the left hand on the strings, with my right eye gazing on the keyboard and with my left on the strings, ...
Well, people must have been suprised to see that Aeolus, the god of winds, could not afford a decent harp tuner that evening, I guess.
—ElGreco