As a musician, I cringed at this sentence. I think it indicates a significant lack of understanding that contribues to the level of outrage of some of the posters here.
For musicians at the level of Ma and Perlman, the issue isn’t “hitting the right notes” or “making mistakes,” which are preoccupations that would trouble young students, most college students, and even many professionals. I guarantee all of those musicians could have sight read their parts, individually or as an ensemble, without making what any of us would regard as a mistake. What they DO focus on is realizing the written musical score as expressive, dynamic, interesting music, within both their individual parts as well as the whole ensemble. Again, at their level, this wouldn’t take that long; music would be made (as opposed to “notes would be read”) during the first run-through. Further rehearsal would serve to refine the ensemble’s collective interpretation of the piece.
I realize that that rant was slightly off topic, but hopefully it should at least show some people that the musicians did in fact “log the time necessary” (since apparently the fact that they already had made the recording doesn’t suffice…).
(By the way, I know this is even more off topic, but next time you’re discussing or debating something about music and there are actual musicians involved, you’d hold onto your credibility a little bit longer by referring to a piece of music, if you don’t know the actual genre of composition, as, well, the generic term piece; song refers to vocal music with lyrics.)
Now, Magiver, based upon the conclusions I was able to draw regarding your musical expertise from that one sentence alone, I will venture to suggest that, regardless of any past experiences you have had with space heaters and tarps, these world-class musicians, all of whom have spent hours a day with their instruments for the better part of their lives, are more qualified than you are to decide whether or not space heaters will git 'er done.
It seems to me that this is probably a more reasonable way to view this situation.
What is important here is the gesture–of the musicians being present to honor the new president, as well as receiving the honor of being invited to perform at such an important event in a society that generally doesn’t give classical musicians their due.
I would argue that most, if not all, of the compromises being suggested here would, I think, cheapen the gesture and/or distract viewers. To place them in a remote, climate controlled location would remove them from the rest of the performers and speakers, detracting from both the spectacle and the meaning behind it. To simply play the recording with the musicians completely absent would relegate it to background music, the performers would be hidden as they already are 95% of the time, and the musicians would appear to be snubbing the new president with their absence. Announcing that they were playing along with a pre-recorded track or displaying a message on screen would simply be distracting and tacky. Heck, even removing the microphones, which obviously served no functional purpose, so as to keep people from later feeling bamboozled would simply have served as a distraction at the time of the ceremony.
Any of these “solutions” would have come at the cost of the solemnity of the ceremony and the significance of the gesture. These were great musicians honoring, and being honored by, the new president, and, given the circumstances, I think what occurred was an appropriate solution.