restarting performance

[Steve Marcus]

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

My tuba instructor chided me if I would stop in the middle of a piece in a lesson.

He emphasized the point by suggesting that one shouldn't even stop in the middle of a piece while practicing. Your brain will keep reminding you of the place that you stopped, and it will occur again--possibly in a real performance atmosphere.
The advice was when practicing, plow through until the end of the passage, then go back and work repeatedly on the culprit spot s-l-o-w-l-y.


Jonathantuba asked,

...would people think a work should be restarted if a mobile phone goes off at a quiet moment ruining the atmosphere?

This is not really an answer to the question, just a humorous aside.

A friend of mine was performing the Gregson Concerto in a private recital for friends and family. Right after the pianist began the long introduction, a cell phone rang. It was the soloist's phone! He answered the call, with the pianist continuing the introduction all the while. "Yes, honey," said the tubist, "I'm about to begin the solo part." Then his jaw dropped, and he walked behind the piano and made a motion as if he was pullling up his zipper. Then, without missing a beat, he picked up his tuba and came in with the opening fanfare.

Yes, this was pre-staged. The soloist's wife had called him from the rear of the recital hall. Most of the audience was familiar with the Gregson, so everyone had a good laugh. Most impressively, the tubist played a fine performance without missing a beat!

[BVD Press]

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

Are you talking about NYP Shostakovich 5 in the late 90s? I was at that concert and the restart of the third mvmt wasn't the orchestra's fault.

Nope. I believe it was one of the Brahm's Symphonies. I cannot remember why it heppend, but tyhey stopped and started over again from beginning after playing a minute or so.

[dmmorris]

I can agree with both sides on this......sorta.

If I'm shelling out $50 (actually well over $100+ including my sweetie and I and supper, parking, etc.), I expect a great show....particularly if it's an ol' "war-horse", .........there is just no excuse for a botched reading on the "standards".

But I'll definitely cut 'em some slack if it is new music or it has a tricky intro. If it's a train-wreck at the top of the page, then they should re-start. If it's well into the piece, then I sorta expect them to grind-it-out in recovery-mode.

I've heard examples where the "botched" piece was completed and the conductor turned around, apologized saying "sorry....we really meant to play it this way" where-upon they played it through correctly the 2nd time.

I've seen a lot of big dogs, and little dogs re-start and I respect them for doing so in public.....still I love to be rocked by a first cut that is perfect

[XtremeEuph]

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

lmao I had a similar problem but thank goodness it was during rehearsel. Our Bass Clarinetist (is that proper, meh stupid woodwinds ) was assigned to hand out "God Save The Queen" (as some of you may know) to perform at our up coming Rememberance Day service. Well it turns out she gave everyone the right version but was too lazy and gave Myself and the Electric Bass beside me the completely wrong version. It sounded absolutely terrible and was in the key of Eb rather than Bb i believe but I insisted to just keep playing because , hey im playing the right notes. Then one day (like a week later), our director wanted to sort out some wrong notes and i happened to be laughing at our trombonist who we always seem to pick because he had the wrong piece. Turns out it was me and wow I felt like a clown even though it wasn't my fault....anyway end of that long, boring story...

BTW I think i have had a restart with my Highschool band like 3 times in 2 or 3 years. Once or twice it turned out well and the JUDGES and audience didnt seem to mind but the other just made things worse. At a festival in Winnipeg recently, a fairly simple song "On a Hymnsong By Philip Bliss" (cant remember who composed or arranged it sorry) and it just fell apart like 52 pick up in the beginning (stupid sax's ,haha i wasnt playing there) but we kept going on and one sax was SQUEALING like a pig. Anyway once we got the recording of the judges, they seemed to ignore the squealing and the whole beginning and just focused on our precision , air , the works. One of the three made a comment saying, the restart could have helped you play the piece properly, or it could have just made you live through all that hell another minute all over again. Just my boring stories I thought i should share.

[big_blue_tubist]

Once, I attended a contemporary recital where the guest artist (a viola player) had to stop and start again because he forgot to retune his strings to the tritone ....
While I thought his unpreparedness was highly unprofessional, I see why there was the necessity to make this change. The retuning changed the entire character of the composition.

[ken k]

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.

I agree Chuck that when I am at a professional concert I would expect near perfection as well, and I would not want to hear something fall apart.

I was mainly talking about student performances. I teach elementary school band and it has happened on more than one ocassion in the past 20 years where something did not get off to a great start and I stopped and started again.

ken k

[Joe Baker]

Joe, ... when I'm paying the price of several CD's for my seat and the orchestra messes up badly enough to require a restart, I get the feeling that someone hasn't done his/her homework.

I couldn't agree more. I'd expect my money back if it happened. Just as I would if the film projector broke down in the middle of a movie I'm watching. Still, projectors sometimes break and ensembles sometimes screw up. Both should be EXCEENDINGLY rare.
______________________________________
Joe Baker, for whom the term "violent agreement" is coming to mind.

[Chuck(G)]

I couldn't agree more. I'd expect my money back if it happened. Just as I would if the film projector broke down in the middle of a movie I'm watching. Still, projectors sometimes break and ensembles sometimes screw up. Both should be EXCEENDINGLY rare.
.

I don't know if I'd ask for my money back--but I'd remember it for a long time. And there are the real stinker pieces--I wouldn't flinch too much if I heard a horn crack a note in the Schumann Konzertstück--it's a tough work.

One very memorable time when I really did feel like demanding my money back didn't have anything to do with the orchestra's performance.

It was a "world premiere" of a major work by a big-name composer; orchestra conducted by a big-name conductor flown in from the Old Country.

Comes time for said world premiere and it's announced that it's not ready yet. Well, the orchestra only had one other work prepared, so they played it--three times in a row.

Idiot composer still got a standing ovation. I was ready to throw my shoe at him.

Sometimes I just don't understand audiences.

[Rick Denney]

I was mainly talking about student performances. I teach elementary school band and it has happened on more than one ocassion in the past 20 years where something did not get off to a great start and I stopped and started again.

That's a different situation than most of the responses have assumed. Excepting contests, performances by schoolkids are not damaged by restarts when the kids lose their focus and things go haywire. Most parents would be grateful that the band director gave them a shot at fixing the problem rather than grinding through disaster.

Also, kids are expected to stretch themselves and play stuff at the limit of their abilities. That's a little risky, but the reward is worth the risk.

Rick "who remembers a sportscaster attracting lots of well-earned ire for calling a college game with the same expectations as for a pro game" Denney

[Rick Denney]

I should go back and see who it was that said this earlier, but someone mentioned that ensembles shouldn't "go so close to the edge". I wholeheartedly agree. That's one reason I have left the community band I used to play with. I don't remember them ever being close to having to restart, but they mangled a lot of music by trying to do the hardest pieces they could get through. I'd have much rather played easier pieces WELL than more difficult pieces POORLY.
________________________________
Joe Baker, who thinks it's okay for music to be hard to perform, but it should NEVER be hard to listen to!**

** And yes, I know, many of you will disagree.

Well, the listening difficulty is much more a statement about the listener than the performer. Some listeners can never be satisfied, and (most) others wouldn't realize it if one the tuba players played the Star Spangled Banner in the middle of any given work. Thus, your standard is not easy to enforce in practice.

It was me you were referring to, but I think you've gone too far with what I said. I think it's imperative for amateur bands to perform just beyond the limit of their abilities (but not so far beyond their abilities that a piece is likely to require a restart).

This gives me an opportunity to again promote my Performance Index theory. I believe all performing groups have a Performance Index. Professional groups might consistently put 95% or more of what is possible out there, so their index might be 95. Outstanding community bands might approach that--say 90. Some bands might only be a 20.

But I believe that any given band will perform to their index no matter what the difficulty of the music. If the music is purposely easy, they will be bored and unmotivated by it and still do no better than their index (they may get more notes, or not, but it will not be more entertaining and is likely to be less so). Pro groups might do well with a boring work just out of professionalism, but the amateur groups I've been in have frequently performed the hardest work on the program well while botching the filler stuff badly.

A good conductor will put music in the folder that requires a band with an index about 10 points higher than the group can provide (or 100, whichever comes first). That will challenge and motivate them to do their very best, with the result that they might improve a few points.

But the typical amateur group that can't get close to perfection on the hard stuff won't get close to perfection on the easy stuff. That's my long experience.

Rick "who thinks boredom is a worse enemy of entertaining performances than incompetence" Denney

[windshieldbug]

Once, I attended a contemporary recital where the guest artist (a viola player) had to stop and start again because he forgot to retune his strings to the tritone ....
While I thought his unpreparedness was highly unprofessional, I see why there was the necessity to make this change. The retuning changed the entire character of the composition.

That's what you get for attending a VIOLA recital...

(One cannot help but be reminded of the old viola joke, "Maestro! Maestro! he turned one of my pegs, and he won't tell me which one!")

[windshieldbug]

BSO started over once at Tanglewood, stopped after 25measures of tchaik 6 bc the sprinklers went off in the lawn and it sounded like people where getting murdered the way the screams echoed into the shed.....

This IS one of the rare times a professional group should start over, but I'd still be hopping mad that someone, somewhere in the food chain didn't anticipate this or had screwed up.

-----

There IS a huge difference between a professional group starting over, and an amateur group of any size. Yet, though my wife and I agree that this will happen sometime in a student's career, she takes the "don't put it in their head that this is a possibility" approach. I can see the point, but it does happen, often enough that I see no problem with giving some guidelines and strategies. For one thing, regardless of how many students you ever train, only x of them are going to make it to the bigs. And you are out there to perform and entertain, not screw up.

Even my wife, in this last year, had the occasion of performing with a period instrument baroque ensemble where some of the players took a repeat, and some did not. This was not her issue, but she had the presence of mind to realize what had occured, step in, make a humorous aside to the audience, and then begin the movement over.

This is what had started the discussion for us, because it has always be so verboten to discuss, yet I thought that simple techniques could be universally applicable.

But then, I guess that's why I became a tuba player. Seeing humor in other performers' plight...

[MaryAnn]

Well....I've never understood how people can approach a performance without having all the entrances memorized; I don't mean the notes, I mean where the notes are in relation to the rest of the piece. This is mandatory in a complex piece of music! For a soloist and accompanist...BOTH should know exactly how both parts intertwine; if one of them has a mental lapse, the other should know the music well enough to catch on and continue.

Once, in whatever Beethoven symphony has that second horn part that is quite low and prominent and goes on and on and even has a repeat....I lost my @#$#@ place and did the whole thing by ear. Had to; there was no other way. It worked, well enough anyway. It wasn't like I could raise my hand and say "Oh, conductor, I've lost my place! Could we start the movement over, please?"

With kids and amateur groups, it depends more on the audience than the performers....and most audiences for these kinds of gigs are forgiving.

I do remember very well, however, a professional performance at a major international horn society conference. It was En Foret, I think....horn, piano, soprano; the horn player kept making gestures with her right hand, waving it in the air; and the horn sounded....kind of sick. Then suddenly she stood up, stopped the performance, and turned to the audience. She said she was not properly prepared and apologized for aborting the performance. Then they all walked off the stage. You should have seen the look the soprano gave her....!

And you should have heard the commentary in the audience afterwards too; what I thought was...apparently the horn player was more willing to deal with the fallout from stopping a bad performance than she was to deal with the fallout for continuing a bad performance. Her reputation, I presume, and her decision.

MA

[adam0408]

I think that when you are in a student ensemble, or any other non-professional ensemble, you should always have that last resort option of starting over. In such groups the goal is often not the performance, but the process leading up to the performance, so screwing up the concert isn't such a big deal.

Personally, I don't think I would have it in myself to stop a solo and restart. I get worked up enough in performance situations so it probably wouldnt do me any good to start over.

I know of one occasion where my sister was playing a trombone solo and her accompanist got off to a bad start, so she stopped and yelled at her. This was at solo contest one year. It was a shame that I was not there to see it and had to hear about it second hand.

[XtremeEuph]

and we keep coming back to the 'why not do an unaccompanied solo? question' (yes i know majority should be accompanied).....but by the sounds of this ancient topic, you figure it is almost HARD to screw up and lose place.

...really boggles me

[big_blue_tubist]

Once, I attended a contemporary recital where the guest artist (a viola player) had to stop and start again because he forgot to retune his strings to the tritone ....
While I thought his unpreparedness was highly unprofessional, I see why there was the necessity to make this change. The retuning changed the entire character of the composition.

That's what you get for attending a VIOLA recital...

(One cannot help but be reminded of the old viola joke, "Maestro! Maestro! he turned one of my pegs, and he won't tell me which one!")

I know I had it coming to me... it was a sort of required attendance. The violist in question played a considerable amount of time with the incorrect temperament. Don't know why a known soloist would not notice something like this.

[MaryAnn]

I've seen "less talented" musicians make the professional ranks because they were able to "physically learn" the piece better than a "more talented" musician who wasn't quite so good at physically learning the piece. Maybe the "more talented" musician memorized it by what the pitches were instead of by the physical mechanism to play the piece, but wasn't able to do as perfect a physical reproduction under the stress condition of performance, although maybe he could write it down from memory.

Believe me, this is quite common! So if this "known soloist" was one of the "physical memorizers" he might have got quite some way into the piece before he figured out why it sounded funny. Really.

MA

[tubajoe]

This gives me an opportunity to again promote my Performance Index theory. I believe all performing groups have a Performance Index. Professional groups might consistently put 95% or more of what is possible out there, so their index might be 95. Outstanding community bands might approach that--say 90. Some bands might only be a 20.

This reminds me of the scene in Dead Poets Society where they graph the poetry...

But I understand what you are saying that pro groups have the ability to put "it" out there...

I think EVERYONE should always do whatever they can to put "it" out there.


The issue here is that LIVE performance is not recorded performance.

Let me rant a bit based on what's been said in this thread -- Those who count mistakes and expect this or that for their money should probably stay home!!

One of the things that makes live music SO wonderful is that sense of unpredictability -- the energy and intensity.

Also, the reality is that sh*t happens... at every level.

The goal of performance should NEVER be just perfection... our goal as human musicians should not be to aspire to be a computer.

SURE, the show must go on, and perfection is a larger or smaller aspect in various situations... and some performance environments do prohibit restarting... blah blah...

BUT...

To have the goal of playing something "righter" than the next person, group, etc is about as magical as watching paint dry.

The situation is always organic, as are the best performers. I've seen lots of performances which have been restarted -- been part of many too. Usually it is never really an issue... great performers can make it not an issue.

One of my favorite performers of all time, bassist Edgar Meyer did it in an encore. He even changed tunes... and it became one of the most engaging performances I've ever seen, ever -- one of those where you walk away a different person than when you got there.


Performance is about engagement with the music and audience. It's about vibrance and energy and communication.

Looking at a musical performance like compiling computer code is not only unartistic, it is downright offensive!!

Windshield bug said:

Once you start, don't screw up.

If you approach performance with that mindset, you will undoubtedly screw up all over the place!!

You gotta take chances when you perform -- put your *b#lls* on the line... push things as far as you can, to churn as much energy as possible, to put as much magic as possible into what the composer has given you!!

Above all, audiences want to be moved and engaged. Period. They dont want a regurgitated performance.

Make things magical, not analytical. If I want analytical, I'll do my taxes... (which reminds me....)

[Rick Denney]

But I understand what you are saying that pro groups have the ability to put "it" out there...

I think EVERYONE should always do whatever they can to put "it" out there.


The issue here is that LIVE performance is not recorded performance.

Let me rant a bit based on what's been said in this thread -- Those who count mistakes and expect this or that for their money should probably stay home!!

When the mistakes distract from the performance, then they are either too glaring or the performance is too thin on energy to overcome them.

Even a band with a low index in my theory can be excited about the music such that the excitement carries the performance. My own band pleases us and pleases audiences, but there is a reason we don't sell CD's.

Rick "who thinks energy is mighty hard to record" Denney

[tubatooter1940]

Worse yet and a pet peeve of mine is a string player (usually a guitarist)
who plays in several different tunings and only brings one instrument to the gig-fully expecting all present to listen to the tuning as he pulls the instrument radically between most every song.