# Have you ever looked forward to a concert and then...



## Oldhoosierdude (May 29, 2016)

... And then it was a bust. Or disappointing at best.

Happened twice. First time was Indianapolis symphony with Gershwin's Rhapsody and a fairly well known soloist. The soloist pounded away at high speed , sounding like a honky-tonk Jerry Lee Lewis. Conductor lost hold of the performance. It was bad. Strangely, ISO performed this again the following year at a cheapie lunchtime concert mainly for kids. Unknown cat guest conductor, unknown cat at piano. Orchestra in summer attire playing loose and relaxed. It was great.

This year ISO had my favorite symphony Beethoven's 6th. I took off work. It was simply ok until the storm and that was more like a mouse fart than a storm. Very disappointing.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Don Giovanni, put on by the ENO in the Colliseum, London, a few years back.

This is was the worst possible version for me, made all the worse because it started so well. But eventually, the Don was more like Kevin the Teenager - even the way he was dressed - than a murderous lothario. Criminal acts 1: they altered and switched around the music, because the director said in his notes he wanted to improve the drama. 

Seriously, it’s Mozart, dude, he’s got this covered.

Criminal act 2: instead of the mandolin ballad being another attempt by the Don to woo a young girl, they projected a version of what we must only imagine was “the ideal woman”, or maybe she was “the one wot got away”, the inference being, Poor Don, if only...he wouldn’t have become a murdering raping idiot.

Criminal act, 3: the Don isn’t faced by a terrifying presence from the afterlife at the end - nah. It’s only his memory, sparking his conscience, and he collapses in a heap on the floor, dead from a heart attack. With bright children’s party balloons strewn around him.

There were more instances of tinkering and tampering which ruined this production, but theee is my lucky number.

By the way, I see the ENO is still at it, if reviews of its current version of Traviata are to be believed...


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

Yes plenty

two notable

3 years ago we paid a premium price for tickets to see matsuev play rach 3 at the RFH.

when we got there it was announced that Matsuev had hurt his ankle and could not play!

They replaced him with Demidenko

I would not have wanted to go to hear Demidenko! But stuck with it what else to do

at least the symphony was good.

the other was a mozart opera at sadlers wells in the 80s - I took a friend wanting to impress him - it was The seraglio

minimalist stage!!! no set no colour drab costume and mozart's most colourful opera!


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## Oldhoosierdude (May 29, 2016)

Kieran said:


> Don Giovanni, put on by the ENO in the Colliseum, London, a few years back.
> 
> This is was the worst possible version for me, made all the worse because it started so well. But eventually, the Don was more like Kevin the Teenager - even the way he was dressed - than a murderous lothario. Criminal acts 1: they altered and switched around the music, because the director said in his notes he wanted to improve the drama.
> 
> ...


Inexcusable!...


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

I've only been "lucky" enough to attend one concert that I was disappointed by a performance and that was seeing Marc-André Hamelin butcher one of my absolute favorite Mozart piano concertos(complete with his travesty of a cadenza he supplied for the slow movement) a few years ago. I've been trying to forget about it ever since. I know he's really respected as a pianist super virtuoso, though, so I won't say anything more about that. Luckily the LA Phil's performance of Schumann's second symphony after the intermission made evening not a complete waste of money.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I was in New York in 1992 (?) looking forward to Franz Welser-Most and the NY Phil play Schmidt's 4th symphony. He was ill, a sub came in, Schmidt was out and replaced with one of my least favorite works: Copland symphony 3. Not a disaster as a performance, but still!!! (The week was saved with the Vienna Philharmonic, Philadelphia, and the Met.)


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Not quite the concert itself, but I was finishing up my evening paper route one November and looking forward to going into town for that evening's BSO concert -- when suddenly the neighborhood went completely dark. It was the Great Northeast Power Blackout and I had to wait months for a reschedule.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

I have never understood the reasoning behind Mozart Opera productions where the attempt is to modernize the sets and costumes when the music remains that of the late 18th century. The craziness starts with some 'artist's' imagination going wild and ends with otherwise normal people funding it.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

DaveM said:


> I have never understood the reasoning behind Mozart Opera productions where the attempt is to modernize the sets and costumes when the music remains that of the late 18th century. The craziness starts with some 'artist's' imagination going wild and ends with otherwise normal people funding it.


Except when Peters Sellars did a very prescient Figaro in the 1980s set in Trump Tower.


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## Biffo (Mar 7, 2016)

Back in the 1970's (can't remember exactly which year) I was fortunate enough, or so I thought, to get a ticket for Zubin Mehta conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra in Mahler 2. Outside the hall, desperate people were holding up fans of pound notes trying to buy tickets; I smugly walked past. By the end of the concert I wished I had taken the money. For many years it held my personal wooden spoon for the worst performance by a professional conductor and orchestra.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Oldhoosierdude said:


> ... And then it was a bust. Or disappointing at best.
> 
> Happened twice. First time was Indianapolis symphony with Gershwin's Rhapsody and a fairly well known soloist. The soloist pounded away at high speed , sounding like a honky-tonk Jerry Lee Lewis. Conductor lost hold of the performance. It was bad. Strangely, ISO performed this again the following year at a cheapie lunchtime concert mainly for kids. Unknown cat guest conductor, unknown cat at piano. Orchestra in summer attire playing loose and relaxed. It was great.
> 
> This year ISO had my favorite symphony Beethoven's 6th. I took off work. It was simply ok until the storm and that was more like a mouse fart than a storm. Very disappointing.


 I've heard some pretty thunderous mouse farts in my time...
As a regular concert attendee I have heard more than my share of disappointments. There isn't much rehearsal time these days and it's usually the shorter works on the program that sound as if everyone is doing it by rote


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Duplicate post"".......


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

DaveM said:


> I have never understood the reasoning behind Mozart Opera productions where the attempt is to modernize the sets and costumes when the music remains that of the late 18th century. The craziness starts with some 'artist's' imagination going wild and ends with otherwise normal people funding it.


I've seen it so often. Sometimes it actually works, if they don't try make the whole shebang look modern. I've see a Figaro in modern dress but the stage setting was almost so ultra modern it gave an other worldly feel, and it worked. It was like stepping out of time - with music that's timeless, so it fit.

But it's a risk they take, and most especially when they presume to be better dramatists that Shakespeare, Mozart, etc, and tamper with the meaning, or the script. A bugbear for me is productions of Don Giovanni where they feel they have to somehow edit the piece in order to make some sort of psychological explanation or excuse for the Don. So the mandolin song became a soliloquy, telling us his inner motives. But the Don has no music or songs in the opera where he reflects on his lot. And his motives are actually rather clear from the start, no excuses necessary, nor does he make any...


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