I don’t know how this could have happened, but…
Maria Joao Pires has prepared the wrong Mozart concerto for this rehearsal, which is being filmed. Once she gets into it, it goes well, but the shell-shocked look on her face… I can only imagine how she must have felt!!!
FWIW, this clip is from a 1998 TV documentary called Attrazione d’amore.
Pires would, of course, have rehearsed and performed the concerto that she wasn’t expecting previously – but it might have been some years previously. However, she had a devastated look on her face before she started 
I can’t watch the video now. What exactly happened? When did she notice? Did they just start playing and expect her to follow? I’m not a classical music expert, but usually, in my experience, in concert the pianist doesn’t have someone next to them to turn the pages of a printed score, so I assume that a pianist has the piece memorized. So what did she do? Just play from the printed score as best she could?
After a good long stretch of looking like she was literally going to die of embarrassment and shock, she composed herself and played the correct piece from memory. Perfectly, if you trust the narration.
She looked like she was going to throw up, but she played it.
Damn. I’d have passed out. Either that, or convinced myself that I was having a nightmare and started pinching myself.
I also, after the concerto was done, would have been seriously tempted to kill whoever it was that told me the wrong information.
I can’t imagine the feeling. I don’t care if they were playing Chopsticks, I couldn’t pick it up.
I was all ready to laugh my ass off, and was blindsided by the incredible and unexpected denoument.
For a concerto, the pianist usually has the piece memorized, owing to its difficulty.
I don’t know which concerto she was expecting, but there is only one in d minor, so she would have known within the first bar.
THAT is the ultimate sign of a professional. You could tell that even when she called up the proper concerto in her memory, she still felt like she wanted to throw up throughout. It had probably been several years since she’d played it last.
Le Ministre, do concert pianists typically have their first rehearsal of a work with a particular orchestra in a public rehearsal like that? I imagine if she’d rehearsed for this guest gig with this orchestra before she’d have known which concerto was actually on the bill. But it looked like a full house behind her.
From this note at MetaFilter -
First readings in North America tend to be closed to the public. People in the administration of the orchestra are often permitted, students at the local university or conservatory may be able to find a way in, but in general, no, it would be the orchestra and the soloist alone together for the first time.
Her face when she hears the first notes, her talking to the director with the “I can’t do it” face…man, she wasn’t even sight-reading, pure freking memory.
and now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll triple-check my sheet music for Sunday mass.
That’s really incredible.
And, as a side note, I love the D-minor Piano Concerto. Hell, I love everything Mozart wrote in D-Minor… I can’t think of anything of his in that key that I don’t adore.
Well, that’s normal for the soloist in a concerto: they are supposed to have rehearsed it so they can perform without the score in front of them. But the poor woman had put in all that time refreshing her mind and her fingers to do one Mozart concerto, so she could do it without a score, then had about a minute to put that all to one side, and dredge out of her memory another concerto.
The same thing happened many years ago, to a violinist. The difference is that the orchestra began playing the Beethoven concerto, in which the soloist comes in at the second measure. The soloist had about 2-3 seconds warning, and he aced it.
I had heard that story about Jascha Heifetz, but in the version I had heard, it was the Beethoven that he had prepared. In the Beethoven, the soloist has 88 bars introduction. I can’t find any confirmation on the Heifetz, though I’m certain he was more than capable of playing anything from memory on a moment’s notice.
Oh my God. This is amazing. Those expressions on her face, the initial self-realization with a smile and then sort of collapsing into a cocktail of self-recrimination, fear, and especially fierce concentration as she dredges up the correct concerto from her memory.
Surely some of what gets her through this, at least to start with, was both knowledge of the piece as well as sheer muscle memory… but muscle memory’ll take you only so far. That she’s able to pull herself together (even though at every pause during her performance you can still see her nausea) is truly astonishing.
It really is the worst nightmare, one I’ve had many times (performing without rehearsal is a recurring dream similar to the “I have to take a test without any preparation!” nightmare). The closest I’ve ever come to this was at a vocal competition. I’d prepared one aria (“O Mio Babbino Caro”) and was to perform with the competition’s official pianist as accompaniment. When I got to the room, the judging panel apologized and said that the pianist had been taken ill and wouldn’t be there. If I wanted I could either sing alone or perhaps wait to audition another day.
Well, I didn’t want to sing a capella, because to be frank, in those days my sense of pitch wasn’t great, and I didn’t trust myself to push myself into a different key altogether. I didn’t want to come back another day because it was a long shlep to the university from my home.
Thinking fast, though my piano skills are rudimentary at best, I asked, “Can I accompany myself?” The judges said, um, okay.
But I’d never played “O Mio Babbino Caro” and didn’t have the music. So I threw out my plans and instead of my prepared audition piece, I switched to an aria I did know how to play, sorta kinda: “The Trees on the Mountain” from Susannah, which I’d performed the previous year in high school.
I’ve never played piano in public in my life, for which everyone is grateful, believe me. And I’d certainly never auditioned having to accompany myself at the piano. I know I fudged the accompaniment and reduced it mostly to basic chords and arpeggios, and I would definitely have sounded better vocally (which was the most important thing) if I’d been standing up using proper diaphragm support rather than sitting. At least I got through it, and that’s the important thing!
But it sure as hell wasn’t in front of a huge audience like this one, that’s for damn sure. An amazing video, thanks so much for sharing. I’ve sent it out to all the musicians in my family.
This reminds me of the story that Arturo Toscanini got his start by conducting a lengthy work by memory (ostentatiously closing the music) in front of an audience that was initially hostile, but which gave him a standing ovation at the end. However, I just checked Wikipedia, and while it says that three other conductors couldn’t complete the job before he did that night, it doesn’t mention the version I heard, that he did it from memory.
I actually do have dreams about showing up for one of my chorus’ concerts, without having attended even one rehearsal, and without even knowing what songs we’ll be doing. And I’m in dance numbers as well, with just as much preparation.
And I left my tux at home.
I was once in the middle of a jazz set and the pianist started “Skylark” in Eb. I do it in Bb.
This is much, much worse. :eek: