OK - fellow PERFORMING CLASSICAL musicians - what's your worse performance nightmare?

Question

Mine is usually the good old "i'm the soloist with orchestra and oh CRAP i don't KNOW this concerto they just started" one. Or I dream that I once again had to check in and see why my Graduate school DID NOT give me my Master's Degree even though I did the program AGAIN!

WOW I did not expect such a lot of great stories! Some are very funny ! I've extended the expiration date in hopes of hearing more.
By "performance nightmare" I literally meant a bad dream - not a real-life situation. It's great that people didn't take me literally and posted real stories from real stage performances.
I'm going to post this again in the wider area of performing arts and ask ALL performers to respond. Bookmark my mugshot over there to find the question if you wish.

Answer 1

I don't play classical music presently.. can I still answer?

If you said yes, read on.

I am a drummer with a group (we're not calling ourselves a band just yet.. We have no name and that's a serious commitment..) once a week or so for a jazz and blues bar. My worst performance nightmare is that I will noticeably (noticeable to everyone but myself) alter the tempo. I don't do that and it's not a problem for me.. but the fear remains. I haven't been drumming for that many years.. I just have a very strong talent and ear for it. And that lack of good training frightens me even though it hasn't ever been a problem. Self confidence? Of course and as you know, if your self confidence is troubled, you think more. The more you think, the less the music posesses you and this is when trouble starts.

Answer 2

Okay, this really happened.....

Picture it, a middle school orchestra concert. Both the sixth and seventh grade orchestras have played, now it's time for the eighth graders to show their stuff. They come out, set up and begin their first song a easy rendition of "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik". The audience loves it! They now play another song, which escapes me now. They begin their finale the finale to Beethoven's 9th, Ode to Joy one could say, but it was not joyous. It was not joyous because the conductor said that there would be a soloist, the first violin. The soloist was scared to begin with, but the show went on. The first half was perfection, even though it was just the introduction, not the main bit. When the main theme came the audience gazed up at the soloist who was standing in front of them. The first four measures were great, the second four were marvelous, but when the soloist began the third set of four measures, travesty!!! Her A string snapped! And with a loud sprang. It sounded like a wounded animal crying out in pain. The audience gasped, the orchestra and director stopped and stared. The girl stood there, bewilderd, what should she do? She remembered that she began taking lessons that year, and her teacher was teaching her shifting. So, after mustering up her courage, she started the solo over, shifting when she needed to, which was the whole time, and ended solidly. Everyone clapped and stood and rejoiced. The teacher was so proud and her parents were so proud, and after the concert, they took her out for ice cream (and a new A string).

That little girl was me, and ever since then, when I perform for concerts, juries, master lessons, I have flashes of the nightmare of eigth grade, but I remember pulling through, and if it ever happens again, I will survive. Because I really know how to shift really high if disaster happens again.

I'm also still known as the girl who's string broke. 7 years later.....

~Amanda~
Future music teacher, current orchestra whipping girl

Answer 3

Well one time, I had a little concert that I was asked to play at for an entertainment piece in the middle of a meeting. I told them that I would be using a pianist for the piece I was playing and they said that they would have a piano for my accompanist there. By the way, the piece I was playing NEEDS the piano part to really make the whole cello/piano duet sound right or otherwise it sounds incomplete without the piano. Well the night of my little solo gig, I show up with my pianist and the people who asked me to play set out a piano like I had asked. Except that they were too stupid to open the lid on the piano because it was locked. I was so annoyed and angry with there stupidity because I was paying my pianist, and I did not prepare something else because I did not think that you could actually lock a piano. They never were able to find the keys to open it so I played my solo without the pianist. I made a mental note to myself after that, (always bring Back Six Suites for cello so that way I have a backup!!!) Now that I look back on this experience though, it just makes me laugh.

Answer 4

You realise this is an AWFUL question? 'Course you do, Gadfly... :-))

Unnamed Middle Eastern capital -- 1982. Social mores being what they were, matinée performances were mainly for chaperoned single ladies and children and the evening for married gentlefolk and the eligible of a single persuasion. Consequently, I would have to repeat the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor on a single day. The concert hall was brand new and the capital's pride and joy (and rightly so) and because only just inaugurated, staff were still being recruited and shown around while the inaugural performances were taking place.

Matinée. We settle down after 'La Gazza Ladra' and set off on the 40 minute journey. About a minute or two in, I have the unsettling sensation that my striking distance to my keys is changing. Nonsense. But it is... I'm starting to crouch... I can feel it... My instrument is sinking. (There is a tour for new stagehands going on down below, and somebody has helpfully thought of demonstrating the instrument lift, which has to go right down before it can come up again...)

I corpsed first. Then the strings. Then the woodwind. Then the front rows of the audience. Then the brass. And only *then* the conductor noticed I was missing...

It was not a good day at the office... :-/

Answer 5

I was playing Parpignol in La Boheme n(perhaps the smallest principal role in all of grand opera). We had a particularly grueling schedule -- Three days in a row, then four off. For those who aren't singers, doing grand opera is a very hard on the voice, and usually you have a day off between performances of the same work.

I had a cold. And we had a special performance for Valentine's day, an added show just one day after a usual 3-day marathon.

I knew the voice wasn't all there....I warmed up very carefully...and the time came for my first sung line. I opened my mouth.......

and made a noise like air escaping from a balloon. Finally, a ghastly croak crawled out of my mouth to assault the listeners' ears.

That was all I tried to sing that night, and luckily the cold retreated in time for the next show. But I've never been able to (or allowed to) forget that dreadful, hilarious-in-retrospect night.

Instrumentalists, count your blessings. You can still at least make a noise when you don't fee, well. Singers, on the other hand, are at the mercy of their health.

Answer 6

I'm assuming you want real ones?! OK- when I was a senior in high school, I was performing the third mvt. of the Haydn flute concerto...which I had no problems playing. Then, I got to the cadenza, which at one point was supposed to cadence on a middle C. Well, I was playing to that point, and then the note wouldn't come out. My C key was leaking. When I got the score back, the judge assumed it was me and not the instrument, and took a point off (if it hadn't been for that, I would have had a perfect score.)

Answer 7

I can't top Cub Cur -- that's pure slapstick

But once I was playing a recital. The piano had one of those tripod dollies on it, and somebody had apparently forgotten to set the brakes. Every time I attacked the keyboard the piano would scoot further away. Had to run it down and pull it back into position -- with dignity of course

There was also the time in high school where I was the accompanist for the school's production of "Oklahoma", and in preparing for opening night the janitor dutifully cleaned the auditorium, including waxing the piano keys. Very interesting performance.

Answer 8

My husband ( pianist) and I (flutist) were hired to do a cocktail hour in a tent, following a wedding (somebody else had the church gig that day - odd for us!) This was on a manicured piece of property behind Daddy of the Brides' insurance agency. It was a steamy August day, and it had rained heavily the night before.As we arrive, a State Trooper is directing traffic, and a HUGE wrecker is towing out the caterer's truck, which is listing to one side in the mud, and we hear dishes breaking, etc. - the caterer's wife is screaming and crying. We park our van, and take out our electric keyboard, amps, etc, and head over to a little stage, about 1 foot high, in a tent. The bride is having photos done at the church - as guests arrive, we are there to entertain them with classical music as they have a drink.

The heavens open again - rain in buckets. The band that is following us for dancing arrives, and are slogging in with wet cables, etc. The lightening makes us turn off our equipment 10 minutes before the end of our set - I have been electrocuted on a gig before, and it was not a happy day for me). Male guests are pushing the tent upwards, to get the huge puddles of water off it ("Betsey's Wedding"). What's that noise?? The ground is SO sodden, that the nearby creek can no longer contain the water - so it is percolating UP through the poured gravel under out tent. Within minutes, the water is 8 inches deep. Men are sloshing, women are holding up their gowns. All the hanging linens on the table are soaked. The WEDDING CAKE gives up in the heat, and the layers slide apart - into the water. The bride's mother is at the bar - slamming then down like a sailor on shore leave. We leave - portaging our equipment (yup, big old 60-pound Roland with weighted action) like African Queen, and the only way back to our car NOW is over a semi-circular Japanese bridge - hard enough to walk on when it is DRY, and you are NOT carrying music equipment.

Yes, the check cleared. Whenever we drive past this site, we point and shudder. . .

I swear that every word of this is true. This site is in Slate Hill, NY - might not be an insurance agency anymore.

The time I got zapped? Short story - playing electric flute with an amplified classical guitarist, at a house party in Woodstock. Big old tube amp between us. Tipsy guest behind us leans FORWARD over the amp, to read off our music stand, and see what we are playing next. As the flute come to my lips (electric, remember?) he spills his Tom Colins into the open back of the amp. Zzzzzzt.

Answer 9

This has never happened to me, but being a wind player I have always had the fear that as I take my last big gulp of air just before a solo or other entrance that I will vacuum in some tiny, hairy critter that happens to be flying by at the time - maybe one with a nasty little stinger on his rear!!

My clarinet professor,who was playing with a nearby major symphony, did have one fly under one of his pads as he was playing a solo. After the rather undignified squeek and finishing his solo, he looked down to see the rear end of the winged-warrior sticking out from under his key. He never found the other half of the kamikaze bug!!!

Musician, composer, teacher.

Answer 10

My worst nightmare is being on stage for the role of Idomeno, (which is 4 hours long) and forgetting the recitative that was to be sung before my aria. All the recitatives sound exactly the same and so does the accompaniment in the harpsichord. Yikes. Luckily one of the cast members on stage mouthed the words and I was saved.