Performance Horror Stories

[blintz]

I know this has been done before, but I still love it!!

Okay, here's mine:

A girl won concerto competition with Tchaikovsky Bb concerto, and she's super nervous for her performance. 

So she comes out on stage, splats the first chord, splats the second chord, splats the third chord, then throws up all over the piano!!   Is that priceless or what?  Oh and for a great comedy act on this concerto, search for the monty python version of it on youtube.

[thalbergmad]

My favourite is the old one about Henselt.

Apparantly he was due to give a concert in front of the Czar of Russia. Being of a nervous disposition, he was smoking a cigar backstage to calm his nerves. Legend has it that when the concert began, he forgot to dispose of it and played the first part of the concert puffing away.

The Czar was amused.

Thal

[blintz]

Hey Thalbergmad.

You're the only person I recognize from last time I was here.  Back before the site changed, I was Thalberg.  Remember me?

I can't get back in with my old username, so now I'm a food.

[nicco]

I know this has been done before, but I still love it!!

Okay, here's mine:

A girl won concerto competition with Tchaikovsky Bb concerto, and she's super nervous for her performance. 

So she comes out on stage, splats the first chord, splats the second chord, splats the third chord, then throws up all over the piano!!   Is that priceless or what?  Oh and for a great comedy act on this concerto, search for the monty python version of it on youtube.

I heard a similar one about a girl playing the Schumann concerto. When she got to the cadenza she threw up on the keys. Yum.

[jakev2.0]

Funnier would be hurling during the second movement of Saint Saens Concerto 2...

[henrah]

I saw Christina Kiss play as part of her complete Liszt cycle at Carnegie Hall, and near the end she cut her finger somehow and there was blood all over the keyboard 

[cygnusdei]

Did she get to keep the piano? 

[thalbergmad]

Hey Thalbergmad.

You're the only person I recognize from last time I was here.  Back before the site changed, I was Thalberg.  Remember me?

I can't get back in with my old username, so now I'm a food.

Greetings.

Ask nils for your old name back.

Then we have both Thalberg and Thalbergmad.

Thal

[ada]

Maybe that should be Thalberg and Mad Thalberg.

And for someone who believe it or not has had a promising career as a concert pianist cut short by pathological nerves (ok among other factors) I don't find these stories at all amusing 

[pianowolfi]

Maybe that should be Thalberg and Mad Thalberg.

And for someone who believe it or not has had a promising career as a concert pianist cut short by pathological nerves (ok among other factors) I don't find these stories at all amusing 

Yeah of course they have two sides. But I am sure there are ways to overcome nervosity. Better, to take it as a source of energy.

[ahinton]

Maybe that should be Thalberg and Mad Thalberg.

And for someone who believe it or not has had a promising career as a concert pianist cut short by pathological nerves (ok among other factors) I don't find these stories at all amusing 

I didn't realise that. I'm not being funny, believe me, but did you try to get help for that? My piano professor at conservatoire in London (yes, I actually had one, although I was such a bad pianist that he ended up leaving there to go - wait for it - to AUSTRALIA, where he is still!) used to say that I should be nervous at all times when playing, even when practising, because it was important to have the right kind of nerves when playing in front of an audience - and in the inevitable pause after that, he added something along the lines of "well, when you practise, you have an audience, even if it comprises only one person - yourself; you're listening, aren't you?". Of course I never had either the ability or the desire to be a performer, but I still managed to learn a great deal from this teacher.

Best,

Alistair

[invictious]

A performance horror story?

Sure.

Listening and watching me play on a piano recital.

[henrah]

Did she get to keep the piano?

Not that I know of. Instead, a man came out and wiped the keyboard clean, only to have her bleed all over it again during an encore


I bet Steinway were freaking out 

[Bob]

I have one.

I prepared an audition piece.  The setup of the audition was where everyone stands in a line outside the door where you play.  Everyone auditioning can hear you play.  I had done my best but knew I couldn't quite play the piece -- but what the heck, they purposely pick more difficult pieces to spread out the abilities of the performers. 

The first whammy -- I was the last person in line.  Just about everyone -- in my mind every single one -- pretty much nailed the piece.   The first person played, and I was impressed.  Second person plays -- same thing.  Third person plays and comes out worried that they missing one note.  Fourth person nails it... fifth...  I'm standing there just hoping to make it through the piece.   Sixth person... seventh.... on and on...  This was not a good way to lead into the audition of course.  On the other hand, being last, I probably didn't have anyone listening to me.  Some of the listeners/auditioners outside the door would criticize the performers -- they are playing it too slow, they missed a crescendo, that's not they way so-and-so does it and they know the judge likes that performer, they chipped a note there, etc.

The second whammy -- I was new to the place and didn't know what to expect.  I walk into the audition room and see three audition judges -- two of which are nationally/internationally known figures.  I had only seen one on CD covers.  That was a nice, surreal shock.

Third whammy -- Actually playing through the piece.  Usually I can just shake off nerves and play as I have practiced.  However, in that case, there was that deep type of nervousness that can come up.  And then when I started to play I remember my body felt very different -- I couldn't "mesh" with the instrument.  It felt like my body didn't know what I was doing, like my hands were the hands of a beginner despite years and years of practice.  Fortunately, I only have a vague memory of struggling through the piece, already knowing what the outcome would be, already knowing I was doing my best, fighting the nerves,  was going to make a bad impression, and still had to go through with it all despite that.

And it was raining outside too. 

Those experiences definitely keep you humble.  I can always look back and know that things can't get much worse than that which is a plus for the future.  (but the next time might come close, you never know...)

[blintz]

Oh, poor, poor Bob.  I've always liked you.  you were here last time I was here (I've been gone for over a year--I was Thalberg)

Well, Bob, if it makes you feel better, I once played for Menehem Pressler.  He's rather famous.  And guess what?  HE LAUGHED OUT LOUD during my audition THREE TIMES.  It was so humiliating.  What an ass.

[cygnusdei]

Damn, a friend of mine also auditioned for Pressler and he told him to just quit the piano. And my friend was really good, too!

[blintz]

Oh, that makes me feel better.  You see, I was playing the Brahms Handel Variations and in Variation 13 I did decrescendos at the ends of my phrases, which my piano teacher had instructed, but which was quite unorthodox.  Looking back that was really stupid, so I suppose I see why he laughed.  But still, what an ass.

[Bob]

I think a bad performance can have postive effects.  You toughen up -- You know what the worst is from expereience.  And it teaches you to look critically at yourself for improvement.  And you know what the range is for "gambling" with a performance.

[bflatminor24]

Lol, similar to the girl bleeding on the piano, here's mine:

So I'm giving a pretty sizeable solo recital. Beethoven's Appassionata, Chopin Scherzo 2, Bach G minor prelude and Fugue, Debussy Prelude "Brouillards" and Rachmaninoff Preludes 23/2 and 23/5 with Liszt's La Campanella as an encore, and guess what?

During the Appassionata, I cut my finger on the damn Db and started bleeding. I had to continue to stay in rhythm and to fool the audience, so I kept playing.

To make it worse, my page turner was this very attractive young girl. She stared at me in horror as my finger bled profusely all over the span of the keys. She looked absolutely disgusted.

Talk about the apex of embarrassment.

~Max~

[molto-marcato]

Hehe, i like that one. I always wanted to practice until i bled onto the piano. Never happened. maybe if i start working on the appassionata  :-).

[mattgreenecomposer]

Oh this is a great topic!
I like what someone else in this forum said..."It keep's you humble."  So true when it happens to you.
mattgreenecomposer.com

[lavalse]

I just read a good story about Schnabel.  During a Concerto he 'went one way' and the orchestra 'went another' - the conductor was horrified but Schnabel just stopped, grinned and shrugged his shoulders - walked over to confer with the conductor then started again in sync.   Very cool...

[invictious]

Lol, similar to the girl bleeding on the piano, here's mine:

So I'm giving a pretty sizeable solo recital. Beethoven's Appassionata, Chopin Scherzo 2, Bach G minor prelude and Fugue, Debussy Prelude "Brouillards" and Rachmaninoff Preludes 23/2 and 23/5 with Liszt's La Campanella as an encore, and guess what?

During the Appassionata, I cut my finger on the damn Db and started bleeding. I had to continue to stay in rhythm and to fool the audience, so I kept playing.

To make it worse, my page turner was this very attractive young girl. She stared at me in horror as my finger bled profusely all over the span of the keys. She looked absolutely disgusted.

Talk about the apex of embarrassment.

~Max~

This also happened to me once, except the pieces I played weren't that advanced.

Pain.

[kd]

During the Appassionata, I cut my finger on the damn Db and started bleeding.

How does this happen? The keys don't have exceptionally sharp edges after all?

[Kassaa]

How does this happen? The keys don't have exceptionally sharp edges after all?

Old and used piano's can have .

[elevateme_returns]

I know this has been done before, but I still love it!!

Okay, here's mine:

A girl won concerto competition with Tchaikovsky Bb concerto, and she's super nervous for her performance. 

So she comes out on stage, splats the first chord, splats the second chord, splats the third chord, then throws up all over the piano!!   Is that priceless or what?  Oh and for a great comedy act on this concerto, search for the monty python version of it on youtube.

is the video the one of richter in padlocks?

[elevateme_returns]

Damn, a friend of mine also auditioned for Pressler and he told him to just quit the piano. And my friend was really good, too!

what??? Thats shocking!!! Pressler is absolutely sh*t!! have you heard his mendelssohn d minor piano trio with beaux arts trio? ugggh his technique is terrible!! what a twat

[elevateme_returns]

Old and used piano's can have .

plus, some people hit the keys so hard that their fingers start to bleed. that used to happen to me. they go really red, then it hurts like hell then they start bleeding

[ryan2189]

I have a really good one....

Last November I played with my school choir at Avery Fisher Hall. Our opening piece was Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, some choral arrangement. I get up on stage and there is a piano intro for the piece. I begin, and two measures into it, the stage guys turn a fan on at stage right. It created this cross breeze and all of my music blew off of the piano, in front of 3,000 people! Good thing was that the choir had not started singing yet, so I didn't mess them up. I got up and walked as gracefully as possible picking up my sheets. I was hoping that one of the singers (or the conductor) would have run over and retrieved them as I tried to recall it from memory. After the twenty minutes on stage or so, I walked off and found out that within that time I had lost my voice, and gotten a cold as well as a migraine, all because of a stupid cross breeze.

[thalberg]

is the video the one of richter in padlocks?

Yes it is.  Isn't it just too much?  I mean, padlocks!  It's funny though because it's so true--pianists really do enact major acts of heroism on stage.  What we do is not easy! 

[jepoy]

the previous weekend was my performance horror story. i had to play two piano solos and three piano ensembles in this annual recital. i actually prepared two months for this and was pretty much ready but two days before the recital, i got really ill (high on fever, lost my voice to sore throat) but couldn't backout because my parts were essential to the entire programme, especially the ensembles.

on the day of the recital, i didn't feel any better so i swallowed a lot of meds and pain relievers just so i could make it. i felt fine. problem was i wasn't coherent. i tried focusing on the music but my fingers just wanted to sleep. so did i. the longer the show went on, the more tired i got. i messed up my parts pretty bad.

i had no time to lament over the incident. as soon as i went home, i just went to deep sleep and rested for the next whole week.

[soliloquy]

The most annoying thing is getting a REALLY bad itch on your head or neck and not being able to scratch it because you're playing some nasty piece with no rests =/

[Bob]

And sweat.   Slowly dripping down.

It doesn't matter where the itch is.

Or even rests.  You're on display.  You're not supposed to scratch things.

[dinosaurtales]

I caught myself drooling once.  I was accompanying a choir and was apparently really getting into it - when I noticed this big long drool coming out of my mouth.  I have no idea how many people noticed it.  Yuck.

[henrah]

Not a performance related story, but related to drooling:

I was riding the tube back to our London flat after an interview at TVU Ealing and woke up suddenly realising I was just drooling, so I quickly 'slurped' and caught it in my hand. I think it was phantom drool though, cos after a while of complete embarassment, I realised my hand was dry :S

[anda]

i've got a good one (and recent... still hurts!):

i was supposed to play some contemporary works in a recital, and one work in particular was bugging me - mostly because it wasn't easy (presto, and way too many notes for my taste...), and because it was full of turning points (you know, certain points that can easily lead you from any section to any section, so that the work duration ranges from 2 to 30 minutes...) and also because the composer was in the audience...

add a prior horror month of daily 14-16 hours of work, and way more public appearances than i can handle...

well, i got on stage, all jitters and adrenaline, undecided what to do about a certain 10 bars passage that i didn't know too well: use a turn point to go around it, or do the right thing and try to break it live... at the last moment, i decided to avoid the peril, used the turn point to get to the next section, and missed the immediate next turn point only to see my hands playing the final cadenza! nobody except the composer didn't realize i had skipped several section - just about half the work- but it took me some days to get out of shock state...

[Bob]

A general one...

At the end of a string of pieces, for accompanying usually, my mind starts thinking "I wish I wasn't on stage.... This is the last piece..... I wish I was done already...."

I've had that happen a few times.  I was going to start a thread about it.  I think it's a general brain drain -- on the last piece it just feels like I'm being pushed along.  The scary part is that messing up is much more likely.  It may have something to do with the mind getting used to the environment, so that it's freed up to focus on other things -- like the blackness of the notes on the white page.... or the relaxed feeling in the hands....

[lostinidlewonder]

A few experiences I still remember:

When I was in primary school like a few hundred years ago, I was playing for the school and for some stupid reason I stopped and totally forgot what to do next. I swore loudly enough for it to be heard in the microphone making all the student laugh.

This isn't piano, but in an operetta that we where doing at the same primary school one of the main characters voice broke, we thought he was joking but it sounded so funny.

In a piano concert in Turkey the piano I was playing on broke some strings and a hammer. I then had to find out what I was going to do since a single note melody line was around that note! Was a nightmare. Especially when the string decided to migrate around the piano rattling away as I was playing.

Cut my finger on a gliss and trail of blood on the keyboard, that is really horrible so I have a lot of sympathy for those who have experienced the same. Bloody gliss on sharp keys, should have warning signs stamped on sharp key edged pianos, "Gliss unfriendly!"

I've seen people run off stage a number of times because they stuffed up at a competition. But in one competition the girl couldn't move, totally froze up with fear. Then he dad called out, "Keep going honey" she snapped out of it and ran off stage. It so sad because I know the audience don't care about it but the poor performers

And something quite weird, one famous concert pianist asked us for garlic so it could be put around the piano. This was to get rid of the evil spirit inside it. What the?

I've also seen a pro pianist before the concert get injections so that the pain they get from their years of over playing is numbed. That is really sad and scary to see.

[rc]

Last year I watched this kid who was maybe 12 sit down at the bench to play a Bach prelude.  It started out well, his father comes out to snap a picture of the kid - he must've been a photography enthusiast, it looked like a pretty fancy camera, made a loud CLICK and bright FLASH with every shot.

One picture, two pictures, three pictures and I start wondering how the kid is able to play through the distraction...  When he starts choking, losing his place.  The musical flow breaks up, father's still snapping pictures.

The kid gets through the piece herky-jerky, Dad must have taken about 30 pictures of his kid sitting there.  He must've been completely oblivious to how much he was messing up his son's performance!  It was painful to watch.  Infuriating actually!

[soliloquy]

I have a recent one that is probably the weirdest one on this thread.


Recently I was playing a few pieces for some friends at a party of one of my friends who is a composition major at one of the local schools, so I was going to come and play one of his pieces that he had recently written.  This particular piece had forearm clusters, and as anyone who has played the Rzewski NAB4 knows, you do not want to be in very restraining clothing, so I was pretty dressed down, meaning I did not have a shirt that was tucked in.  Now, I don't know if I'm completely alone in this or if some of the other guys may have had this happen to them also occasionally, but I was wearing a belt, and what women probably don't know is that your belt-buckle can snag various body hairs in its proximity >>  So as I'm playing this rather athletic piano piece, my belt is ripping various waist-region hairs out whenever I lean over too far, so I had a sort of Lang Lang thing going the whole time I am playing this piece from hairs being ripped out of my body.  Lucky the piece was only 3 minutes though

[lau]

you could've just stopped and told them the problem.

my worst performance experience is when I was playing for my class and then when i got to the middle section of Chopin's FI, someone said "boring", and then i did a glissando and got up from the piano and quit playing. Then I said "yes, that part is retarded"..then I went on with school.

[phil13]

mmm...

Last February I held a small recital in front of about 30 people (I am so glad that turnout had been low that day.) I had one of those experiences where you spend all your time working on a hard work and then f*ck up the easy work(s).

I opened w/ two Bach P&Fs, one simple, one more complex. I messed the simple one's fugue up so badly I forgot where I was and had to improvise my way to the end. 

And then I played the complex one perfectly! And the rest of the concert was fine!



Phil

[elevateme_returns]

the most annoying thing for me is not being comfortable before starting to play.

i find myself adjusting my position on the seat like half way through the 1st page