It's a classic dilemma for a conductor, which most of us have faced at one time or another: something goes drastically wrong in a piece; do you go on and hope it recovers and no one notices, or do you start over? What if it's in the middle? It might be an instrumentalist who gets off by a bar, or just a tempo which never gels.
In my case (this happened to me last weekend) a soloist missed an entrance, someone who's usually rock solid. And it was a fast Baroque piece, 3/4 conducted in one. Would she find her place before her line ended? Would the tenor (who came in next) be able to find his entrance if she didn't? You've got seconds to decide. In sports they call this sudden death.
I decided to stop. I tapped my stand with the baton to stop everyone, said "measure 58" to the orchestra, and off we went. The soloist knew she'd screwed up and was ready to jump.
Did the audience notice? I'm often surprised how things that we performers think of as major disasters sometimes go over their heads. Of course everyone was too polite to mention it so I'll never know, but it's also true that if I'd gone on for the next twenty measures without any singing, it might have seemed a bit bland.
No deep philosophy here, just a chance to vent. I suspect most of us have been there.
P.S. the piece was Magnificat, by the composer I call "pseudo-Buxtehude" since it's often published under Buxtehude's name, having been discovered along with a bunch of his music, but scholars doubt it's by him. But since we have no other name (there's no name on the manuscript) his name has kind of stuck. Pseudo-Buxtehude, kind of makes sense, sort of like PDQ Bach, I guess.
1 comment:
Hi Allen, this happened to me in 2006, with BWV 78. The tenor aria has obbligato flute. I had two very professional soloists, and they were both fully prepared. Somehow, and this is really suprising, the flute player got lost. The tenor then tried to save him, and his aria, and that made things worse. After about 2 bars of total chaos, I cut it off, announced a rehearsal number, and away we went. The "audience" (an ELCA congregation in Downtown Washington, DC) told me afterwards they heard me interrupt the aria, why did I do that?
Once we had this sort of thing happen with Helmuth Rilling in Stuttgart, only involving a Bach motet and double choir/instruments. One group thought we were starting at the beginning, the other group thought we were somewhere else. Rilling knew immediately what was wrong, but in his fun-loving way, decided to let it go, just to see where it would lead, and how long it would last, and if it would right itself. When it became apparent that it would NOT, but everyone (this was one of those open church services, with about 200 people singing, almost all amateurs) kept going, determined or oblivious, that's when he cut off.
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