Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Your most embarrasing performance moment?

Wow those are some interesting stories. I didn't know who Jessye Norman was, but I googled her and evidently she's big in opera. I couldn't help but giggle at her decisiveness when firing you. It's all good though buddy.

That Sonata in B minor is pretty long, I can understand how he may have forgotten some of it. Wow though, how could you never perform from memory? Unless you have very good sight-reading skills, that must be a difficult task.. I think that inevitably if you practice something enough, you'll end up memorizing it. That happened when I was trying to sightread Bach, but decided not to look at the score. I guess it's always good to have the score for confirmation.. as long as it doesn't hold you back.

This is one of our most interesting threads.
We even got some autobiographical info out of Stores!

I was accompanying a friend one time, a long time ago. Just before we walked out on stage, she hissed, "Hurry up! Go change your shoes!" It was a formal affair, and in my rush I had forgotten I was wearing a ratty old pair of runners and old sweat socks that were full of holes.

So many drama from not having the sheet Thats one thing they sure did better in Vivaldi - Mendelssohn's time.

I've often had to sneeze during practise, but fortunately never in a performance! I wonder what I'd have to do . . .

Are you saying that pianists in the "old days" memorized better? Actually, I read that Clara Schumann was the first one to perform without the score. Although, keyboardists had memorized their music before (as people are saying, it is hard not to), they still performed with the score.

I'm impressed with how he handled it.

I'm saying that in the "old days" people always performed with score. Mendelssohn was known to be able to play everything from memory, however he always played with score, as he deemed it arrogant to play without it. What a wise man . So kind to those who can play, but have trouble memorizing.

Right! Pianists and singers are the only ones who perform without the score regularly. It's not fair because the other instrumentalists get to use the music...I'm not sure why it became standard. But I feel like when I memorize a piece I know it better, and I can concentrate on musical aspects instead of being worried about the notes.

My feeling is that everyone can do what they want or feel more comfortable with; as for me, a piece gets memorized WAY BEFORE I'm able to play it decently. I guess it 'gets into' my brain before it gets into my fingers....

in the "old days" people also had to improvise a lot, I think it's easier to play without a score than to get the King in the audience give you a theme and improvise on the spot a 4 voice fugue on it knowing that if you mess it up you're likely going to be fired

I really have no idea what one has to do with the other.

I was actually able to memorize -- and perform reliably from memory -- through my younger years. At the time I decided to start using scores in performance, my memorization skills were still good. I just decided I wasn't going to subject myself or my audience to the crash-and-burn risk my teacher had experienced. To this day, I don't feel like a piece is ready to performa until I've gpttogo it mostly memoriaed.



000

[Sorry about the two-part post; the keyboard on my other computer started acting up. Starting over with the last sentence:]

To this day, I don't feel like a piece is ready to perform until I have it mostly memorized. In fact, some parts of pieces are so physically demanding and require such constant contact between your eyes and the keyboard that you couldn't possibly play them at speed unless you had them memorized. It's not a matter of "sight-reading" when you perform; it's more a matter of using the score as a friendly, familiar aide memoire to keep your mind in the music.

Other posts in this thread and on the topic of memorization over the years have suggested that you aren't being true to the music unless you've memorized it. I see it in just the opposite way -- that playing with a score liberates you from neurotic fear of memory failure and allows you to concentrate all your senses and energies on making the music sing. It's worked that way for me for a long time.

For this reason, alone, MarkC, ^ it's worth the price of admission! --(pun intended!)-- [joking, stores!... joking!!!]

I have two:

My 2nd or 3rd recital, I think I was 8 or 9 years old, and playing Kabalevsky's Prelude and Fugue Op.61, No.1. It was an absolute favorite of mine that my dad would play, at my request, while I sat next to him on the piano bench when I was really little. At the time of this recital, my folks had pretty recently split. They were both in the audience. I had the dreaded memory lapse right where a page turn would be. It took several moments of awkward fumbling before finding the line again. I'm pretty sure that's when performance anxiety started for me. As soon as the recital was over, and everyone was out of the hall, my mom had me sit at the piano, and play it through. "You know this!" she scolded. I think she was more embarassed than I was, plus whatever memories were wrapped up in the piece... Ah, music--that can touch the soul in so many ways!

In college, I was *not* a music major. There was a guy on my dorm floor who was studying percussion. He mentioned off-hand that he needed an accompanist for a marimba piece. I said, "I'll do it!" It was a really active, dissonant modern thing, but after a lot of practice and a conducted session with his instructor, it went pretty well and looked like we could pull it off. I did not have the piece memorized, however, and during the recital, when I flipped the page at the page turn, damned if the page didn't just sit totally perpendicular off the music rack. Just sat there in the center of my nose--right between the eyes! I was doing my best to keep going without knowing the piece without reading it, and to find a place where I could smooth that sucker flat--swatting at it several times before it would lay down! The looks of shock on the faces of the other students in the audience, and the sheer disappointment of my friend the marimba player will stick with me forever. We did one other piece together, and I used a page-turner. We ended up doing that piece twice--the second time for an invited engagement. So, the story does have a happy ending!

--Andy

Sounds like you just blew them all away!

I posted this in 2002, about an event from 1964:

you were saying



and I was saying that I am not sure I agree too much with 'better', yeah, they had the sheet music but they were also expected to be able to improvise on the spot, something that nowadays is not done anymore (at least in classical) and which is IMHO a lot more difficult to do well than to memorize a piece.

We got a pretty good stand-up act going here.....


.....not to mention.....



....and really most of the 'serious' stuff here is pretty funny too..... although at the time, none of it was on purpose.

Mine is also in church:

I was playing organ as a sub for a catholic church. The organ in their chapel had broken, and they had rigged up a digital piano behind the console as a sneaky quick-fix. So I dutifully pressed the "Pipe Organ 1" button and rehearsed with the cantor, and left the chapel for a few minutes before the service began.

Well, SOMETHING must have gotten pressed on the digital piano's control panel, because it was not as I left it--I didn't realize this until too late, when I tried to give the musical prelude to the Processional Hymn to start the service, and the DP gave no chords, no Pipe Organ 1, just a preset salsa beat at top volume! In my panic I could not even find the right buttons to press, and could do no better than pull the plug, restart the keyboard, press "Pipe Organ 1" yet again and reissue the Processional Hymn--at which point the procession unfroze and started walking again, cautiously this time, towards the altar.

I wasn't invited back, but I did dine out on this story a few times...

30 years ago in my teenage years, I played keyboards in bands, mostly rock and country music. We were playing the UFO song "Love to Love", which begins with keyboards and builds one instrument at a time till the lead guitar hits a screaming note. The intro is building and the screaming guitar decided to come in 3 measures early, and off beat. Instead of carrying on, the inexperienced band crumbled to a halt. With nothing left to do, and facing a silent audience, I started the intro again. This time we got though it! I still have a recording of it somewhere. How I miss those days!