# My performance horror story



## SuperTonic (Jun 3, 2010)

This was supposed to be a response to the Horror stories...whats yours thread. After I typed it up I realized it was way too long for a forum post, so I decided to put it here instead.

It was my junior recital (I was a cello performance major in college), and my program was JS Bach's Solo Cello Suite in c minor, followed by Shostakovich's Sonata for Cello and Piano in d minor and ending with Brahms' Sonata for Cello and Piano in e minor.

Now, I had the two sonatas down cold. The pianist and I had been rehearsing for months and we had a great rapport with each other. We both knew our parts as well as could be expected and we played well together musically.

The problem was the Bach though. It was a late addition to my program; added maybe 3 months before my scheduled recital. My teacher and I went back and forth over what else I should play. We both agreed it should be a solo work, but I wanted to do something I had learned previously given the time I had to prepare it. My teacher vetoed all of my choices though because they either weren't a good fit for the program or they were too easy. So I was going to have to learn a new solo work and memorize it in the time left before my recital. We finally agreed on the Bach c minor suite, which had always been my personal favorite of the Bach suites. Looking through it while I was deciding, it didn't look like it would be too hard to learn from a technical perspective, so that was my choice.

The problem with the c minor suite is the prelude. It goes on forever, which is exhausting when you are playing a solo work because you don't get any breaks. That is something I didn't appreciate when I was making my choice. I also misjudged how difficult it was from a technical perspective as well. There are a lot of passages that tie your fingers up in knots. So, needless to say I struggled more than I thought I would learning the piece. It wasn't until maybe 3 weeks before my recital that I felt I had a technical grasp of the work, and I hadn't even started trying to memorize it at that point.

And then disaster struck. My instrument was damaged exactly two weeks before my recital, and urgently needed to be repaired. It was unplayable without repairs (it had developed a soundpost crack in the back panel of the instrument which adversely affected the sound of the instrument). My instrument was in the shop for a week and half. My teacher loaned me a crappy cello so I could keep practicing, but that is far from an ideal situation when you have a recital coming up in a few days.

Anyway, my instructor took pity on me and told me that, given the circumstances, I didn't have to memorize the Bach, which was a huge relief. The only other option was to cancel the recital and reschedule it for the next (Fall) semester, but then I would have needed to find a new pianist (she was graduating and would not be available next semester) for the other pieces on my program, and give that person time to learn the parts (the piano part for the Brahms' sonata is very difficult, and the Shostakovich isn't exactly easy either). And then, if I were to graduate on time the next spring, I would have to turn around and present my senior recital the very next semester. So postponing the recital just wasn't a viable option.

As I mentioned earlier, the prelude to the Bach piece is very long, and it covered I think 6 pages of music. Normally it would be performed from memory, and there really aren't any good places for page turns, so the publisher didn't make any effort to put the page breaks in strategic locations in the music. So for my performance I made photocopies of the music and taped the pages together. I would need two music stands so that all 6 pages of the prelude could be open in front of me. There was a similar problem in one of the later dance movements of the suite as well which required taped together photocopied pages to avoid an awkward page turn.

At the beginning of the recital I told the stage hand I needed two stands and gave him the music to put on the stand. I always get really nervous as I am about to go on, so I was pretty flustered at this point. I was very nervous about the Bach because I still didn't feel as well prepared as I really wanted to be. My thought was to just get through it as best as possible and get on to the part of the better part of my program. So I sat down and started playing without really thinking about anything or taking any notice of my surroundings. That was a fatal mistake. After I got about a page into the music I realized that the stage hand had not arranged my photocopies so that I could get all the way to the end of the piece without a page turn (this was my fault as I had not given him adequate instructions). I started to panic, trying to figure out what to do, all while I was still playing. I finally decided that I would just play until I got to the page break and then try to play to the end of the next phrase from memory, hoping that some of my efforts of memorization would have stuck. Then once I got to the end of the phrase I'd stop and arrange the music so I could get to the end of the piece.

It sounded like a good plan, but when I got to the page break my mind just blanked completely. I could not think of what came next at all. For some reason I kept playing though, thinking I could fake a phrase ending. That just made things worse, all of my music theory knowledge went right out of my head of course, and I was basically just playing random notes at that point. Finally I just stopped and rearranged the music.

I can only imagine what it must have been like for the audience. I had been going on passably well up to that point, and then it all just went off the rails. Anyway, I never recovered after that. I was complete flustered and my fingers just seemed like they had stopped working. I was reading the music, but the sounds coming out of my instrument bore little resemblance to what was on the page.

I finally got to the end of the prelude, which seemed to take forever. I tried to take a few breaths and calm myself down for the remaining dance movements and had some luck at first. But in my panic I had forgotten that there was another bad page break in one of the middle dance movements and I needed to arrange photocopies again to be able to play the whole movement without break. I made the exact same mistake a second time. At this point I was beyond mad at myself. When I stopped yet again to fix the pages, I seriously considered just getting up and walking off the stage and not coming back. Obviously I didn't do that, but that was the state of mind I was in. I actually skipped the repeat of the first Gavotte on purpose after I played second Gavotte, which is a huge faux pas (that would be like stopping after the Trio section of a Scherzo without repeating the Scherzo section) but at that point I didn't care. I knew it was a disaster and I just wanted to be done with it. When I finally got through with the Bach I stood up, took my bow (surprisingly there was some applause, but my parents and friends were in the audience so they would have applauded regardless) and walked off the stage.

I REALLY did not want to go back out there after that. My pianist, who had been watching from backstage, put her arm around my shoulder and calmed me down and reminded me that the rest of the program would be great and I just needed to put it behind me. I took a few minutes to calm myself down, while the stage hand pushed the piano out and got the stage ready for the rest of the concert. If I had to go back out there alone I don't think I would have been able to, but thankfully the remainder of my program was accompanied, so I was able to push through my anger and nerves and go on. The rest of the program went great. We played the sonatas as well as we thought we would be able to, and the performance was well received by the audience.

After the concert, my teacher and I sat down to listen to the recording, which we had to do as part of the grading process. He told me he wasn't going to belabor the problems I had had in the Bach because I obviously knew it was a disaster. He did get very angry at me for skipping the repeat of the first Gavotte though. When we got to that part of the tape he stopped it and just tore into me. He said it was by far the worst part of the whole performance. He said he could chalk up the other problems to stupid mistakes, but that was a conscious decision to do something that just is not done. I really had no defense for myself other than that I was just in a bad place emotionally and I made a bad choice. He said if I was going to make it as a performer I would have to learn to get past mistakes when they happen and not let it affect other parts of the performance.

I ended up getting a C for the recital on the strength of the last two pieces. He said he was ready to fail me after the Bach performance, but he changed his mind after hearing the remainder of the program. He said he would have failed me if it was a senior or graduate recital. Juniors are only technically required to give a half recital and I had the option to collaborate with another junior to give a full recital, but such a collaboration has to be agreed to and set up well in advance. This however is rarely done. Juniors usually always give full recitals anyway.

He gave me the tape of the performance so I could keep it for myself. I took it home and smashed it with a hammer. Thinking back now, I wish I hadn't done that. I would like to have kept a record of the Brahms and Shostakovich performances. I could have just recorded over the Bach. But it did feel good at the time when I did it.


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