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When do you all feel it appropriate to restart a piece?
In recital?
In auditions?
In orchestral situations?

When do you feel it isn't?

Just doing some thinking and wondering opinion.
Jim

rascaljim wrote: When do you feel it isn't?

I don't believe it is ever acceptable to stop and restart, especially in a performance situation. But, on auditions, if you feel you really (and I mean REALLY) could do a piece a lot better, after you finished you can quietly ask the adjudicator if you can redo it - but you better be able to deliver the goods this time.
I once had to restart a piece in a jury because the accompanist and I got off (crazy hard part for her, but not the Hindy.) Afterwards, one of the panel who makes a living playing commercial music explained to me the degree to which that was considered unacceptable in the commercial world and why his input on my grade would be less than stellar.

FWIW in the late 80's I saw a great tuba player with the initials HP wave his arms and stop a small ensemble recital performance, shout out "sorry, I turned two pages" and then restart. In all honesty, it came off very unprofessional and didn't go over well with the crowd.

I don't think this goes over well in athletics, either.

Certainly never with an audience. I can also recall a Philladelphia Orchestra Brass concert that I attended while in school in which the first trumpet clearly had not had time to warm up. Halfway into the first piece, he waved his hands, said "excuse me!" and went off-stage to get his playing and karma in sync. He came back out, restarted, and gave a HUGELY better performance, but it left a very bad taste in everyone's mouth.

Bottom line: if it takes longer to start right, THEN TAKE IT!
Once you start, don't screw up. If you do, you clearly weren't prepared.
And remember: the broken skate lace excuse has already been used, and it didn't work then, either.

Hmm.
I´d think a piece won´t be interrupted if someone simply missed a note. SOMETHING must have gone COMPLETELY wrong beyond a chance to fix it without a restart.
A whole section being 1-2 measures away from anybody else, for example. This happened at our last band concert. How are you supposed to fix that ?

The whole trumpet section came in two measures early, and very convincingly so. Some of us, in a "Show must go on" attitude, realized what was happening and skipped two measures "on the fly". Others, in a similar "Show must go on" attitude, kept with their sheet music, hoping the trumpet section would realize their fault and correct it. A third group couldn´t decide right away which group to follow and got lost.
Within one or two measures, the whole band just crumbled.
Fortunately this was a short part in a medley, so VERY soon we could "Restart" by simply starting the next song with a HUGE "ONE" from the conductor. (Note: these people weren´t off a beat or two, but two whole measures. We agreed where the conductor´s "One" was, but just didn´t know which of the 345 "Ones" of the piece he was conducting.)

Obviously you can´t do that in a longer piece.
As part of the audience, I´d be most appreciative if the conductor simply stopped, defined a measure to start, and be done with it, instead of going through 5 minutes of chaos.

I think its ok to restart only if the "problem" ISNT YOU. Dont go back and start again so you get another shot at playing better.

An example, the bass professor at my undergrad school (a great bass player) was in the middle of a recital. Not long into his 2nd or 3rd piece, this HUGE and ANNOYING blatty trombone sound came from the hallway adjacent to the performance hall.

The recital hall wasnt TOTALLY soundproof. And the trombonist was working on that blatty pedal range, playing loudly. It was unintentional. That hallway was a common place for people to practice (its a utility hallway--no classrooms or anything connecting to it). The trombonist couldnt hear piano + bass through the closed door, though we could hear him! He stopped, put the bass down, walked over to the door, bitched out the trombonist, then returned to begin that piece again.

I dont know what he would have done if he were near the end of a long piece though--I know I wouldnt want to listen to the first 18 minutes of a 22 minute piece that I had just heard cause of something like this...

That is a case where I thought it was fine to restart.

My take on this is that I am always very reluctant to give up and stop the piece. An almost instant assessment of the situation is necessary. After weighing the positives and negatives, one might restart if the positives of starting over outweigh the negatives of having to admit that you couldn't get through the piece. On the one hand, it is bad to have to admit to everyone that you are having such a big problem, while on the other hand it might be even worse to keep going. Not a pleasant choice to have to make.

Dean wrote:this HUGE and ANNOYING blatty trombone sound came from the hallway adjacent to the performance hall

What's annoying is that he had to do this himself; that nobody had the stones to go take care of it finst!

I attended a Mozart birthday concert this year, complete with big-name guest. The single glaring flaw that sticks in my mind was a restart--it was pretty obvious that the orchestra was pretty confused as to whether the conductor was taking things in 2 or 4, with the result of a train wreck becoming obvious in the first 4 bars.

While this may well have been the fault of the conductor and not the orchestra musicians, it sticks in my mind to this day. There may have been other clams in the performance, but I don't remember them.

Jonathantuba wrote:Our concert band conductor stopped a solo the other tuba player was giving after a few bars because where he was standing his bell was pointing straight at the conductor who was being deafened (the conductor had forgotten that his bell points right and mine left ). Everyone roared with laughter while he got the soloist to move to the other side of the stage to restart.

I think if it is right to restart depends very much on the situation and event - but in any case it takes a lot of nerve.

Jonathan "who would have been annoyed if it had been his solo restarted"

I would say it also depends on whether or not you wish for the audience to roar with laughter. There are times when this can be a good thing. Other times, it is not at all good.

There have a been a few I wanted to stop and retart. Anyone ever "crap" all over the opening of the First Ewald Quintet? I am very fortunate to have mossed most of the notes at a conference many years ago. Even more fortunate that I have a tape!!

A few places I have heard restarts in the past:

Columbus Symphony (I used to 1-2 times a week and things are bound to happen)
New York Philharmonic - many years ago
Chrstmas Brass Choir concert a couple years ago - they stopped and started twice I believe

In graduate school, I heard a world-class violinist perform for students at a university in the US Deep South, Ole Miss, at Oxford, Mississippi.

Many of that school's students badly needed a taste of culture. As the ticket holders seated themselves, I heard a young student whisper to his date, "Is that a grand piano?" She whispered back, "I think so."

Because of the heat in the moderately small auditorium, the windows were open. Outside, someone parked next to a window started the engine of a mufferless sports car.

The car's engine revved up and down--for an eternity it seemed. The violinist played on for a few measures, but then stopped and waited for the car to drive away before restarting.

Between movements, he received lots of applause, which he graciously accepted.

Let me answer your question with a question.

If you were in the audience, would you rather hear a piece played correctly or would you rather listen to someone completely botch it up and not stop? Assuming it can be played better then I would stop. Brain farts happen, and sometimes you just need to get back on track.

I mean we would have to be talking about major problems such as the problem which was mentioned before such as an entire section coming in incorrectly or half the band playing in 2 while the other half is in 4.

Obvioulsy it is not ideal but it sure beats the continued problems.

Once at a community band concert we performed a march (can't remember which anymore). Unfortunately there were two versions of it in our folder and about a third of the band had the wrong arrangement up (it was in a lower key than the original). Needless to say I stopped and we made sure everyone had the correct music up and then restarted.

Also one would not necessarily have to go completely to the beginning of a piece or movement. there are often sections within a piece where one could restart.

ken k

rascaljim wrote:When do you all feel it appropriate to restart a piece?
1. In recital?
2. In auditions?
3. In orchestral situations?

1. Only for an external disturbance. If the piano player loses it, the accompanist should stop, and pickup again when possible. The soloist should know to keep going. If the soloist screws up, the pianist should keep going, and give the soloist a nod at the next important entrance. At solo contest, I recall reaching the cadenza of whatever it was I was playing, and my mind went blank. The accompanist froze. After a pregnant pause, the music came back to me and I kept going, and the pianist fell right in with me. There was no acknowledgement of a problem. The judge noticed, but approved of our handling of the matter.

Stuff happens. I went to listen to my niece play a recital recently, and she had trouble with her bassoon strap getting tangled in a key at the start of a movement. She just decided what would be skipped, stopped playing for a moment, fixed the problem, and then picked back up. The pianist never stopped.

The quintet in which I play has members who sometimes forget that counting the rests is just as important as counting the notes. Wrong entrances are common in rehearsal. I live in dread that it will happen during a performance. I have to think about a strategy for dealing with it if it does, and I think a sprinkling of important milestones marked in the piece to provide a place to regroup on a signal from whoever is still confident is the way to deal with it.

But if the disturbance is external, then stopping is justified in my view. The audience is there to hear the music, not the disturbance. I once attended a high-school festival performance in which my niece was playing, and the moving crew started loudly crashing things together for the next band while her band was still playing. The conductor pressed on for long enough to ascertain that the noises were not going to stop, and then turned to the judges and promoter. They told him to continue, and he refused, saying that one reason they were there was to get a clean recording that was required for another festival (and for which this festival advertised itself as a preparation event). The promoter then got off his butt and dealt with the issue. It was then I realized what a scam most of these festival things were. A few minutes later, during a quiet bit, when the conductor was milking the phrase, the noise started up again. He stopped the piece and instructed the band to leave the stage. The audience applauded.

2. Only for an external disturbance. If you can't play it right the first time, it isn't going to get any easier, and the likelihood is great that you'll just dig the hole deeper.

3. I can't think of a time when a professional orchestra should ever be in a position to have to stop without some very significant external event, like maybe the back wall of the hall caving in. I was watching a performance of the Houston Symphony many years ago when one of the violinists had a mild heart attack during the performance. He started to fall out of his chair. His standmate immediately put his violin down, put an arm around the sick performer, and guided him off stage in about three seconds.

There was one case where a delay in starting was justified. The Chicago Symphony stopped in Austin while on tour, maybe in 1986 or so. The truck carrying their instruments had overturned in West Texas, and had damaged or destroyed many of the large instruments. The concert was immediately reschedule to start an hour late so the musicians could arrange to borrow instruments. A fellow came and sat in Jacobs's chair and warmed up on a Miraphone 188, for example (Jacobs was not well and an undertudy was on tour with him--I assumed that was he). Then, the orchestra manager came out at the revised start time, and announced that the replacement truck had just arrived with the instruments, and he didn't have the heart to force the musicians to play without seeing what there was to see, and would the audience endure another delay. Applause of approval. For the next while, basses were being moved here and there, tympani replaced on stage, and so on. So, the concert started nearly two hours late, with Jacobs playing the (apparently slightly damaged) York. They played Mahler's 5th, and blew the doors right off the UT Performing Arts Center, which before that time I'd thought was rather a dead hall. Once they started, there was no stopping them.

Even amateur bands and orchestras should play within themselves and choose works that don't take them that close to the edge, though I am amazed by the number of players with decades of ensemble experience that must have every beat dictated to them to avoid getting lost.

Rick "who thinks chamber music is a great teacher of how to keep going" Denney

ken k wrote:If you were in the audience, would you rather hear a piece played correctly or would you rather listen to someone completely botch it up and not stop? Assuming it can be played better then I would stop. Brain farts happen, and sometimes you just need to get back on track.

What I expect for my $50 is a near-flawless performance. I don't expect to see the orchestra stop and re-tune in the middle of a movement; I don't expect to hear erratic tempi, bad phrasing, lack of dynamic control, missed entrances, bad articulation and a whole host of other bush-league problems when I pay to sit in the audience. If I do, I feel cheated.

IMOHO, paying audiences are too polite in this country. When a performance gets badly mangled, I yearn for shouts of "Fiasco!" or a shower of wilted produce aimed for the stage.

With community/amateur groups or free concerts, my expectations aren't nearly as high. I recall hearing a community band restart "Blue Tango" no fewer than 3 times in a row because the director was unable to communicate to the players. It was a free concert, so I could laugh along with the band.

This brings up an interesting point that my wife and I have discussed recently:

If you're going to spend a lot of time playing at any level, then you're going to experience a train wreck. Yet with all our combined schooling and conservatory experience, neither of us was aware of a single course in recovery. A pro should know or be able to read the music, but at every other level one can expect something to happen sometime, yet no one has codified what to do when it does.

[when do I start over? when do I back up? how can I get back on track? how do I vamp until someone else can? etc.]

A little bit in this direction could go a long way...

windshieldbug wrote:If you're going to spend a lot of time playing at any level, then you're going to experience a train wreck. Yet with all our combined schooling and conservatory experience, neither of us was aware of a single course in recovery.

I don't know if I agree. A course in what to do if you screw up, may give the student the feeling that it is okay to screw up.

On this topic in general, I give you a name: Ashlee Simpson and I ask you what is she famous for?

Mark wrote:On this topic in general, I give you a name: Ashlee Simpson and I ask you what is she famous for?

Having something go wrong, and not having the ability (or the brains) to recover.

Rick Denney wrote:[
The audience is there to hear the music, not the disturbance. I once attended a high-school festival performance in which my niece was playing, and the moving crew started loudly crashing things together for the next band while her band was still playing. The conductor pressed on for long enough to ascertain that the noises were not going to stop, and then turned to the judges and promoter. They told him to continue, and he refused, saying that one reason they were there was to get a clean recording that was required for another festival (and for which this festival advertised itself as a preparation event). The promoter then got off his butt and dealt with the issue. It was then I realized what a scam most of these festival things were. A few minutes later, during a quiet bit, when the conductor was milking the phrase, the noise started up again. He stopped the piece and instructed the band to leave the stage. The audience applauded.

Rick "who thinks chamber music is a great teacher of how to keep going" Denney

I absolutely agree with the conductor's action, above. If I had been in the audience, I would have given the band a standing ovation. I also agree with your assessment of most festivals.

How about the case of Ashlee Simpson on that night she did Saturday Night Live when the drummer started the wrong track. Now that they gave up the fact she was lip syncing, was it better for her to just walk off stage or should they have stopped and synced up the right tune? This can only happen in the pop world!

brianf wrote:How about the case of Ashlee Simpson on that night she did Saturday Night Live when the drummer started the wrong track. Now that they gave up the fact she was lip syncing, was it better for her to just walk off stage or should they have stopped and synced up the right tune? This can only happen in the pop world!

She should have started moving those lips to the song that was playing and kept going. Walking off was the worst of her three choices.