Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner I flubbed another performance.

Yes, thank-you, Barb, for sharing that, and thank-you, Masume, for supplying the link. It was very interesting and also comforting to know that the very best pianists also have their own "oops" moments. Part of making a mistake, whether amateur or pro, is knowing what to do next!

(I was kidding about being perfect. I'm pretty sure that I will always play worse in public than at home, and I'm certainly not perfect there!)

Bearlake...it was amazing how much playing the wrong rhythm changed the piece. I just didn't know it well enough to realize what I was doing. I've learned that audiences often don't notice little mistakes, but this was really glaring and I can't see how anyone could have missed it!

lol. at a piano camp one time, we had about six people playing the same two parts for a performance, and my friend found out at the end that his didital piano wasnt turned on.

lauralei,

just to encourage you to keep playing...we have all gone through anxiety and regrets for poor preparation or performances. But keep in mind that most of the audience is appreciative of our efforts and talent and they are not very critical. Our worst critics are ourselves. You probably tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, and that makes things worse. Playing in church, retirement homes, charity benefits, for friends and family - that's where you get your confidence. All of this advice has been mentioned here before - but I just want to second it!
My funny story is that I used to fill in on organ in church, even though I never really studied the organ. Basic pedaling and stops were easy. So I decided to get a little bold, and fooled around with the stops and the volume. Well, every Sunday we had a quiet prayer time when the pastor would pray with the congregation and the organist was supposed to play a very very quiet hymn in the background (this was a small country Baptist church). I couldn't hear myself (on the organ) and dove into a beautiful hymn for prayer - not knowing that the volume was loud enough that the congregation could not hear the pastor. I played all the way through this prayer and nobody ever said anything...the pastor didn't stop me, nothing. The only reason I knew is that my family told me when I got home. Being a perfectionist, I quit playing the organ for the church because I was so embarassed. But nobody even cared. That's my sad story.

Maybe I should stop reading this thread With my first piano performance coming up this sunday - reading of all the many things that can go wrong is making me nervous!
But at least it gives me some perspective JBL, re your friend's silent performance (oh dear!) that happened to me and a friend the first time we sung (backing vocals) with a band. We were inaudible but couldn't tell until afterwards when lead singer announced "That was lovely, girls! Too bad we couldn't hear you." grrrr! It was hard to forgive him for making us look like twits as we scuttled off stage blushing.

I remember my very first recital a half-century ago. I was playing "Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer" In the bridge section, I got into keys unknown to man-kind. Now to this day I can not play the middle section without the music in front of me. I can play hundreds of pop pieces off the top of my head. I can do Bach and Beethoven and company, but I have this bizarre mental block on this crazy song!

I remember my very first recital a half-century ago. I was playing "Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer" In the bridge section, I got into keys unknown to man-kind. Now to this day I can not play the middle section without the music in front of me. I can play hundreds of pop pieces off the top of my head. I can do Bach and Beethoven and company, but I have this bizarre mental block on this crazy song!

Just think, if nothing bad or scary or embarrassing ever happened to us, we'd have no good stories to tell. Thank goodness for these good stories! It keeps all the rest of us smiling.

Not a piano flub....but in some musical I was playing the piano for(during the performance) one of the actors did something wrong and cursed rather strongly under his breadth. Only trouble was he didn't realize his body mike was on, so it wasn't under his breadth at all.

Laura,

I've got several nursing homes where I make surprise appearances. One of the nursing homes is glum, dreary, depressing, and just awful. (My uncle was there for several years despite my protests.) I make a point of going to this awful place to play, hopefully bringing some joy to others who are "imprisoned" in that environment. I'm sure there are several places like this near you, too. You'll bring some joy and color into the resident's world and soon will forget about yourself. There are kind aides who will actually bring patients out of their rooms to sing or listen.

Congratulations for pulling through this, Laura. I've done similar things likewise, and like you felt like a twit when everything was done. The most important thing when playing with someone else, a very good teacher-friend told me a very long time ago, is to begin together and end together strongly and with affirmation. He said you can go off on tangents in the middle, but as long as you end together, the world will be happy.

This isn't going to stop you from thinking the performance over in your head and worrying about the stupid mistakes you made. This is human and very much the music-critic in us to think about what we could have done better.

Someday when I get a chance, I'll post about my recent piano duet performance that went less than stellar on December 10th.

John

I happened to see recently that there is a series of clips( about 14 of them) that encompass a documentary about Keith Jarret's career on Youtube.

Here is link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9rTZLjBOfI&feature=related

If you watch enough of it ( and it's well worth doing so IMO) a couple of things become clear:

Keith is of course a genius, but he too is hard on himself.

He makes the point about one's expectations and how they effect us. For reasons talked about in the documentary, The Koln Concert nearly didn't happen. For various reasons, expectations were near zero, and from this he played the inspired music we know of that day.

Neil