Concert/recital meltdowns

[farg]

Share some of your favorite embarrassing/hilarious/appalling recital meltdown stories!

My favorite is one I heard from a former professor...Supposedly, a female pianist (who he did not name) was giving a performance of Chopin's first piano concerto in NYC in the 80s. My professor said she was visibly nervous and sweating bullets during the entire 4-minute orchestral introduction, all the way until the last chord before she had to start playing. And then, perfectly on cue...she vomited onto the piano.

The concert had to be canceled, and everyone's tickets were refunded.

(a story similar to that happened at my school last year: A tenor's recital was almost canceled when someone in the front row threw up loudly on the floor in front of him. They had to have a 20-minute intermission to clean up the mess. Definitely not as funny as the other story though.)

[mr music]

I have two but there are many to mention (as I recall them I will post them).

I once went to an eisteddfod and a cornet player was playing air & variations on The Ashgrove. Somebody had come in from a side door of the hall and blew the music off the soloists stand. But as all good cornet players should, he played the rest from memory.

I was once on route to a band job with a few other fellow band members by car. The driver (as he always used to do) was pointing out the various features of the local area as we were traveling along. Our driver shouted, “Now that’s where the principal French horn of the … orchestra lives” and then with a sudden thud we were all thrust forward and there was loud bang. We got to the band job on time, but the funniest thing about it was our driver leapt out of the car and accused the other driver of stopping short!

Mr Music

[perfect_pitch]

I had a friend of mine who was playing Chopins Militare March in A Major, and decided instead of playing from the book, photocopied all the pages and stuck them together with sticky tape... I think it was 8 pages long all strung together.

He got to about the 3rd fricking bar when the music fell of the stand and onto his hands... he couldn't see what he was playing for the next couple of seconds as he tried to figure out a quick pause he could use to put the music back on the stand...

When he realised there was no way that could happen - he flicked his hand aggresively and threw the music to the floor. The rest of the piece was a complete disaster.

[richard black]

I heard some pianist (can't remember the name even if I did want to 'name and shame' him) playing Rhapsody in Blue live on the radio on the BBC Radio 2 programme 'Friday Night is Music Night' - it used to be a genuinely live concert with an audience and it gets a huge number of listeners, somewhere in the region of 1 million I believe. He was getting cocky and showing off something rotten.... and then he had a real train wreck of a memory lapse. Just about the biggest live audience you can find in the world for a (largely) classical concert, and that happens. I bet he felt about one inch tall as he walked off stage after that. The conductor just managed to hold it all together but it wasn't pretty to listen to.

[minor9th]

About 30 years ago, a friend of mine gave his university Senior Recital that consisted of very demanding music, such as Bach-Busoni Chaconne and Beethoven's "Appasionata", all of which he played virtually flawlessly. Uproarious applause resulted in an encore (one of Chopin's Etudes) that he could play in his sleep. Well, less than a minute into it, he went blank! He poked around for a few seconds, desperately trying to remember it, to no avail. He shrugged, smiled at the audience, and walked off stage. He had to be literally drug back on stage so the department chair could give him the year's "Outstanding Soloist" medal. He stood there with his head hung in shame.

[birba]

There's the famous one of Karajan and the Rite of Spring.  Alain Lombard told me this.  He was studying with Karajan at the time.  The maestro got lost and had a melt-down and one by one the instruments sort of died out, sort of like the Haydn "adieu" symphony.  Only no one laughed.  And no one DARED think it funny.  Needless to say, he never performed the rite of spring again.

[weissenberg2]

Well once (it was not really a recital) for a school presentation I demonstrated and explicated Rachmaninoff's B minor moment musical (I had mentioned in a previous thread) and it was not really a meltdown (but in the last page I got lost but rather convincingly got myself back on track) but I had to play on an electric keyboard and on every part that is forte or louder it made a shrieking sound and it brought out every note equally so it sounded like wrong notes. I am still embarrassed   

[Bob]

I heard about a performing who left stage (ticked) and returned with an axe for the piano.  I think it's on another thread on here.

[nanabush]

Ugh, two exams in a row I've had to stop, apologize, and restart the piece.

The first time was for my Grd 10 exam; the Bach Prelude in D major Bk1 was going well for like 10 seconds, then I shifted my right hand too high, messed up.  A small "I'm sorry" and I restarted, and played it well.

The second time was the Brahms Rhapsody in G minor for my ARCT; after the octaves, the slower part in D minor, left hand memory blank.  "I'm sorry" and another restart.  After reading the criteria for a successful exam, I thought they would have failed me on that piece.

The comments for both loosely said "2 attempts at this piece; well played but the break in the performance was unsettling"... I was happy I managed to get them on track, but those comments kind of threw me off.  It also sucks because it always seems to be the pieces I know flawlessly that I have damn memory blanks!  I've had to play much longer stuff than those without slips   

It was just that awkward silence while I shuffled back to the starting position and glared at the examiners and had to restart.  For the ARCT, they almost looked disgusted, but thankfully they didn't give me a bad mark on that one lol.

[makeanote]

At a music camp there was a very extroverted, 'look-at-me' type pianist playing the Chopin Polonaise in A major (Op 40. No 1). At the end of the trills in the 'trio' section, he smacked his head on the lid of the front board of the grand piano after an excessive body movement to hit the Ds.

The only thing that would have made it funnier would have been if his action had hit the lid and it closed on his fingers!

During the camp, we'd ask him how he got the red bump on his forehead...

[farg]

At a music camp there was a very extroverted, 'look-at-me' type pianist playing the Chopin Polonaise in A major (Op 40. No 1). At the end of the trills in the 'trio' section, he smacked his head on the lid of the front board of the grand piano after an excessive body movement to hit the Ds.

The only thing that would have made it funnier would have been if his action had hit the lid and it closed on his fingers!

During the camp, we'd ask him how he got the red bump on his forehead...

Wow, that is hilarious. Did he stop playing when he hit his head?

[makeanote]

Yes, he had to stop. It was in a masterclass type setting.

[shasta]

These are not exactly "meltdowns" but are some unexpected performance stories:

One of my former piano professors studied with Claudio Arrau.  He loved telling the story (urban legend?) that Arrau was once performing a recital in Chile when chickens flew out of the piano.

I attended a chamber music concert in Carnegie Hall many years ago.  The group (quite young in age) was performing the Mendelssohn C minor Piano Trio beautifully until ~2 minutes from the end of the last movement, when the violinist busted a string.  They all stopped playing and looked at the violinist, who sat there stunned.  She ran off stage and it took nearly 20 minutes until they returned with her newly-strung violin.  They finished the last 2 minutes of the piece.

I was at the symphony ~5-10 years ago and if I remember correctly they were performing Mozart's A major Clarinet Concerto with their own clarinetist soloing.  Several minutes in, there was a HUGE bang in the concert hall.  The clarinetist jumped a mile and was visibly rattled and some of the orchestra members stopped playing.  After trying to plod through the mess, the conductor finally yelled "STOP!" and everyone stopped playing.  From the buzz spreading through the audience, I guess a heating/cooling unit in/near the concert hall exploded.  After several minutes of stunned silence, the conductor started the concerto over from the beginning.