Being expected to play at performance level at short notice

[figaro]

I'm curious to know some thoughts and perhaps also some advice on handling very late notice to play.  Recently I was asked to fill in for a harpist who wasn't available by playing their part on piano.  It was very short notice but I also hadn't played in a group in over a year.   For this concert a keyboard that would be connected to a track that sounds like a harp.  I was given the music the day of the last rehearsal before the concert and I struggled through the rehearsal in understanding the conductor's style, listening to everyone else's part, sight reading rolling chords but later being told I have to play it like a harp and not like a piano.  And never mind all the glissando's.  During this rehearsal the conductor was patient with me and told everyone I just got the music.  Whenever I made a mistake there were some snickering and laughter from some orchestra members which didn't feel good.  And being confronted by a member at the end of the rehearsal with "Can you play this?" was frustrating.  I think the conductor knew that I could play it if I had been given more time to learn the part.  Somehow in the end, their harpist was available again so I won't be in the concert, which probably is best.  I'm just upset that I had to wait over a year to be offered a part at last minute, couldn't play it because I didn't have time to learn, and then be questioned about my abilities and in the end not needed.  There is an actual piano part in another piece for this concert, but one of the violin players somehow got the part before I was able to ask if there was piano in the concert. 

[quantum]

From the pianist's perspective: in these situations one needs to approach learning the music differently as opposed to the ideal of having enough time to go through the music.  Identify the most important parts of the music, learn these first.  Don't waste time on things that you can easily sight read live.  Identify how much time you actually have to work on the music.  Select the most important sections from your previously selected most important sections list that can fit within your given time constraint.  You might end up with a selection of 10% to 20% of the actual music you need to learn.  This is what you work on. 

Be efficient during rehearsal.  There is plenty of inactive time that can be used to your advantage.  Eg: the conductor is working with the strings, the the brass, the percussion, talking about administrative items not applicable to you.  30 seconds here, 15 seconds there, it all adds up.  Use this time to annotate your score with fingerings, phrasing, cues, etc.  Use this time to analyze the music and form a better understanding of its structure.  Don't waste time playing on your phone or socializing with your neighbour, be attentive and professional at all times regardless of how everyone else chooses to behave. 

I was given the music the day of the last rehearsal before the concert and I struggled through the rehearsal in understanding the conductor's style, listening to everyone else's part, sight reading rolling chords but later being told I have to play it like a harp and not like a piano.  And never mind all the glissando's. 

In this situation what you do is to distill the most important elements.  It is not essential to get all the notes as  written.  Rhythm is priority, even if you have to just thump out a single note to keep rhythm, or omit some chords.  After rhythm, what is important to the chord?  The highest pitch, the bass pitch, the roll and chord itself.  If you are facing information overload in sight reading, choose the elements that would be most identifiable to the listener. 

Your objective is to give the impression you can deliver your part well, and can do so with conviction. 


As for the orchestra members:  that is totally unprofessional and shameful behaviour.  It should not be tolerated. 

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Once you get put in enough of these situations you can kinda figure out how to fake it.  Improvising REALLY helps with sh*t like this

If it’s heavily orchestrated,  it doesn’t matter what notes you play as long as you can hear SOMETHING being arpeggiated in the right register (but try to be in the right key center). 

If there’s complicated rhythms in unison with other instruments, don’t play anything.  You haven’t learned them yet and you don’t wanna draw too much attention to yourself for *** up

If you have something like straight 16ths but you’re having trouble reading it, just improvise something within the key center and in the same register

I guess the moral of the story is if you have time, try to write it out as a chart or a lead sheet and read off that if you can’t actually get the notes and rhythm right.  I’ve done a lot of gigs like this and I show up and play whatever I feel like playing if I can’t learn something fast enough 

[essence]

When at school, I played timpani with the school orchestra, I started playing as a 4 piece group accompanying an opera written by the head of organ (ex. Kings College organ scholar).

Various disasters. I am a mathematician so cannot count. In one performance of the opera, I thought that when the conductor lowered his hands to put down his baton at the end it was an extra beat, so I gave an extra loud bang on the timpani. He raised an eyebrow.

Later there was some county orchestra event. First rehearsal in the afternoon, performance in the evening. Some music nobody had ever heard before or after.

150 bars of silence, with changes of time signature. I didn't have a clue where I was. Missed various important interventions. When the music got louder, I just started a drum roll.

Isn't there some Walt Disney cartoon about the traumas of a cymbal player?

It's all fine if you know the music, but sight reading hundreds of bars of silence is a nightmare/

Why do I remember these disasters so clearly, and do not remember the successes?

In short, don't let your bad experiences intrude too much, we have all had them.

[lostinidlewonder]

I was given the music the day of the last rehearsal before the concert ....

...Whenever I made a mistake there were some snickering and laughter from some orchestra members which didn't feel good.  And being confronted by a member at the end of the rehearsal with "Can you play this?" was frustrating.

Quantum offered excellent advice.

I have no idea about the difficulty of the piece but given it’s harp it probably has a lot of fast arpeggios and runs which is really demanding for sight reading on the first try or even in a short window to practice and analyze, unless you’re a top tier sight reader.

It’s not your fault, so don’t sweat it. The laughing and snickering is nothing about you, it’s just how absurd the situation is. Wrong notes at a final rehearsal are not expected. It can feel like they’re making fun of you but honestly, I doubt any of them could sight read the harp part on piano as well as you probably could.

As for that arrogant remark from a fellow musician that’s just a low blow given the conductor explained the situation to them all. Don’t worry about them, they’re probably not very successful in their own musical achievements. Keep this mantra in mind “Successful people want others to succeed. Unsuccessful people want others to fail.” It’s a powerful thought you can use to deal with negativity and helps you gravitate toward the people who are actually useful for your own growth.

Now, practical stuff. If I had to sight-read something really hard at short notice and play with others, here’s some ideas. Simplify on the fly, keep the essential rhythm, key notes and chord structure. Don’t try to hit every single note if it risks losing the flow, coherence matters more than perfection.

Use rehearsal time smartly, while other sections are playing or the conductor is occupied, annotate your score, figure out fingerings, phrasing and cues.  On a digital piano headphones let you play along quietly while the rest of the orchestra is doing their thing. 

Improvise if needed, if a tricky section is too complex, arpeggiate, fill in good sounding chords or keep the right key and register. Make it musical, not messy, this I understand might not be a confident skill with classical pianists but if you train a lot of sight reading it becomes a more natural skill as we do it all the time when reading difficult works for the first time and just want to get the gist of it without stopping to analyze.

Burn the midnight oil if you can, if you’ve got an evening or part of the next day free, dive in and practice those tricky sections, simplify parts that are just not going to be resolved in time, make yourself feel confident and ready, it is high stress but doable, personally not something I'd like to do much of. If I did that and the next day was told oh the harpist has actually turned up now, that'd really annoy the heck out of me. Putting yourself into such a stressful cramming session only to hear, "oh yeah sorry we don't need you after all", lol they'd get quite an assertive response from me if that happened haha.

[lelle]

Everyone has already given you good advice. It is indeed a separate skillset to read and learn something well on short notice. And then there's also the difficulty of following the conductor and coordinating with the orchestra - another separate skillset, which we pianists are typically not used to.

I have gotten fired from a gig exactly once in my life, and it was with a choir where I jumped in to play piano on a short notice, and simply could not deliver what was needed in the time allotted.

As with anything difficult, you need to practice practice practice, ideally in circumstances where the stakes aren't as high as they were in our cases.