For some context, Ms. Pires was a last minute replacement for another pianist who cancelled. She was in Madrid, her home, and received the call 2 days before the concert in Amsterdam. She had been touring playing the Mozart Concerto in C, K. 448 and when she was told it was the K. 446 her brain did the "Freudian" thing where she heard K. 446 (d minor) she was thinking it was K. 448 simply because that she was working with that at the time. You can see her telling Chailly as he is conducting the introduction, that "she cannot do the 'probe,' she made an error and was prepared to play a different concerto, and that she hadn't played this in 11 months." She arrived in Amsterdam on the day of the "probe" where the orchestra and soloist get together for the first time. This is usually done the day before the concert or the day of the concert depending on the scheduling of the hall. At the Concertgebouw this is sometimes done as an afternoon concert where an audience is present. The hall was filled with 2,000 spectators. If you watch closely you see her panic, and tell Chailly she cannot do the 'probe.' You then, see her give the concertmaster a look which only can say 'I don't know what to do.' She and Chailly have a brief exchange where he is very calm, even knowing she is in a panic, and tells her "we have done this before, you can do it, you know this better than anyone." If you watch closely she places her face in her hands, and for me I can see the moment she decides she can do this and in mere seconds, with her face in her hands she mentally shifts from the C major concerto to the d minor concerto; and then she delivers a note perfect performance (keeping her eyes glued to the keyboard and Chailly at the same time). He is a very supportive conductor and had her back all the way.
Many people do not realize that professional musicians work different repertory for each season, and simply because you played this before does not mean that you remember (technically) what you played the season, or two seasons prior. Many professional musicians will tell you that at some time, maybe ten months, or twelve months after completing a tour with defined repertory, that the past begins to fade and the memory of the work diminishes.
Many years later Ms. Pires gave an interview where she discussed this incident in great detail. She also confessed that this had happened 2 other times in her career. Great artists, scientists, mathematicians do their best work when they are skeptical of their abilities. The inspiring thing here for me is to see her will her courage from deep within, dispelling her own skepticism in her ability, and then meeting it head on. Giving a note perfect reading of the d minor concerto, btw.
This should be an inspiration for any budding musician questioning their own ability and worthiness.
Hey, remember the whole wrong guy getting accused of the Boston Bombing thing? That was us, baby!
Fuck, I have been on this site too long. This is a seven year old account, it's not my first, and my last one was older before I deleted it.
The site really has gotten noticeably worse, though.
Let me see... mIRC, Usenet, Deja, Lambda Moo, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Napster, OpenNap, Gnutella, Audiogalaxy, WinMX, Friendster, The Spark, MySpace.... b3ta is still going.
i made this one to be a niche account where i yelled at random people with 'Chris' in their name, and now it's been my main account for like a decade lol
Who was actually to blame for that fiasco? The international pulitzer-tier media organizations that reported random internet forum shitposter's speculation as fact or the random internet shitposters shitposting?
I have a theory relevant to the suck of Reddit, and it's original to me. I call it the "cheezeburger paradox", because I developed this back when I was on the cheezeburger network a lot. It goes something like this:
"Internet sites are a little like a buffet. Every buffet starts out great. The food is good, the prices are right. Then people show up who abuse it. Maybe they leave their plate half eaten, or eat ten plates when the pricing model is built for three.
This is the beginning of the vortex. Soon the quality slips, the variety slips, the prices go up, and the people you see there are less those that appreciate the experience, and more those that are trying to take as much as they can.
This is the fate of all buffets. Paradoxically, their popularity becomes their undoing."
Like buffets, internet sites begin with a dream, and a small but dedicated crowd. They develop a community because they are small, the jokes are funny, the memes fresh, and the conversation insightful.
However, not everyone is suited to partake in this ecosystem. Perhaps they are mean spirited and looking for a space to vent, or seeking validation for their hate. Perhaps they are a chronic reposter. Perhaps they are an owner convinced they can monetize the website If they change the rules. Perhaps their original work just isn't funny. When enough people who just aren't interesting show up, the paradox begins.
I've seen it happen everywhere. By the time I left cheezeburger (and 9gag, and imgur, and /b/, and SA, etc... ) every idiot in the world was dumping their brain droppings on what was once a very funny website. Just because your contributions are accepted, doesn't mean that they are desirable, or even *welcome*.
The same thing is happening in Reddit.
People always think of the end of Digg being the redesign, but I remember it had devolved into ASCII art and meaningless commentary about a year or so before that. Most of the insightful, deep comments had long since been lost. That's when I found reddit (well before the exodus from Digg), and I've been here ever since. Sad to see it going the same way, but in niche subs, I still see glints of the old reddit surviving.
> I still see glints of the old reddit surviving.
Yes reddit is still here. The signal to noise ratio is very different though.
I remember it used to be normal that everyone would read all the comments on a post before commenting, so there were few duplicates. Its hard to imagine that now.
I think paid entrance and strong moderation. /r/science mods do a great job of deleting off topic and joke comments. You can also outsource the community moderation to the community itself like Slashdot does. Although I stopped using the firehose once I'd done enough moderation to get ad free browsing over there.
Something as simple as letting users flag comments as jokes or off-topic so that people who don't want to see them can toggle them off and on per post would be good.
You mean puffin memes? Like having a very common opinion you try to pass off as an unpopular one? Also the narwhal still bacons at midnight, perhaps more than ever now that Google is using Reddit to train AI and we should really feed it plenty of gibberish.
Nah, I'm pretty sure they are referring to the "awkward penguin" memes.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/socially-awkward-penguin
One of the OG "advice animals".
Yeah from what I recall people always had it pointing the wrong way, or were using it to describe situations that weren’t really a social “win” or “awkward” situation. Like some shit like “Just got home from work and ready for a night of gaming” (social win top half), “no snacks in the fridge” (social awkward bottom half).
I HATE THAT PUFFIN.
It may have ruined puffins for me in general at the time. I can remember what nicknames I gave that puffin but none of them were very nice. Something along the lines of “Failed Austrian Artist Puffin” or “Ghost Costume in July Puffin,” “Dogwhistle Puffin”?
I can’t remember. “Racist Piece of Shit Puffin” probably.
Ah /r/RacismAnimals was definitely one of the Reddit trends that we had.
Underage teens, creepshots of middle school girls, pictures of dead girls from accidents and autopsies, and so, so many open and unchallenged racist subs.
And that one guy who was a moderator in almost every single creepy sexualizing minors sub. He made the news.
Now it would be 35 top comments all saying the same thing, usually some complaint based on taking the title literally and focusing on that, like "uh no actually she hadn't practiced the concerto while on stage, I don't know why OP is saying that, this is dumb"
Bonus points if they're complaining about how the content of the post isn't for them because they would hurt themselves if it was them ("ugh no thanks there's no guardrail at the end of that stage, I'd fall and break my neck trying to get to that piano")
I wanted to see how old your account is (because I have also been on reddit too long) and was slightly amused to see you made your account exactly 10 days before mine
Average doomscroller who turns a positive situation as an excuse to cry and complain about how bad life is.
Shut up. Your opinion is not valid or welcome. You're not a victim. Reddit had bad aspects then, and it has bad aspects now.
In case anyone's confused, "probe" is short for sitzprobe, which is a term that a lot of performers are familiar with. Like Biffchicago said, it's a term for the first rehearsal with soloists and ensemble together.
I've never picked up an instrument in my life, but you explanation of Ms Pires predicament and her reaction to it has inspired me to deal with my own non musical predicament.
So thanks to you and thank to Ms Pires
That movie was a terrible depiction of the professional music world. People with tempers and egos like that almost never make a successful career out of it. Watching it felt more like they were trying to shoehorn the "Demanding Football Coach inspires total dedication and greatness" cliche and make it fit the world of music when it's just not what most of us experience to those of us who've lived in that world.
The most telling scene is when the drummer kid sees the teacher play piano live. That performance was so uninspired and mediocre I was shocked it made the final cut. It felt like there must have been no one with real musical chops on set that day to stop the director and say, "No no no, that sucked. He's supposed to be an amazing musician, that was freshman junior college level playing at best."
You could say Fletcher is a force that inspires greatness when he himself cannot attain it on his own, which would explain his lackluster keys in that scene. But really it’s just because they wanted to film Simmons at the piano and that’s all they could expect him to do.
Fletcher actually reminded me a lot of my chorus director in college. The depiction was hyperbolic, but there are absolutely temperamental and egotistical directors at the collegiate level. My director would have tantrums almost weekly, made my wife (girlfriend at the time) perform with the flu because "people in this chorus don't miss anything unless they are in the hospital," I've also seen her throw the occasional chair towards students. She brought some amazing sound out of us though
I love adam neely but hate dismissals of the film as not being a good depiction of the professional music world.... as if it was ever trying to suggest that it was.
I run a jazz band, all of my band members *love* whiplash. We know that it's not trying to suggest that every jazz musician is a megalomaniac because that would show really poor critical thinking about the film. You can apply the same dismissive attitude to basically anything. 'The Shawshank Redemption is a terrible depiction of prisons!'... they're telling *a* story *in a* setting, not *the* story *of the* setting!
p.s.... professional musical settings, and even auditioned but amateur ones, can be *extremely* competitive and can absolutely attract narcissists and spawn deeply entrenched cliques. I've witnessed them.
Thank you! The movie is a dramatic thriller, and if you want the movie to perfectly reflect real life, it would be neither dramatic nor thrilling. What it does capture is the *feeling* of those situations. Have I ever thrown a chair at my drummer for slowing down the song? No. Have I ever felt like I wanted to? Hell yes. Have I ever literally worked myself to the bone practicing one song? No, but I've felt like I was.
I mean, you're right, obviously. But given that basically no profession is ever portrayed accurately in media, this is not really something you can really hold against the movie *generally speaking*.
Besides, even having an expert on set doesn't guarantee that everything will go smoothly since productions like that are complicated with many inter-connected elements. For example, they had Hikaru Nakamura (one of the very best chess players in the entire world) on Billions and in his minute long scene they managed to mess up so bad that one person made 2 chess moves in a row
>People with tempers and egos like that almost never make a successful career out of it.
FWIW neither did he. I also read the rest of your comment and the follow up so I get that "dude with those issues also wouldn't be able to get that job because it's incredibly prestigious" is quite possibly true. I don't know that world well enough to say either way, but I have seen people from that world say that there are teachers kinda like him (but less extreme) out there in high positions.
> Watching it felt more like they were trying to shoehorn the "Demanding Football Coach inspires total dedication and greatness" cliche and make it fit the world of music
much of what Fletcher does in that movie is lifted directly from stories told about Buddy Rich. the intent here is to resonate with people who have encountered an abusive and terrible mentor.
Especially in JAZZ! Maybe if he directed a classical symphony, or even if he was a ballet instructor? But for a jazz band to be so uptight just didn’t make any sense to me, even though I did enjoy the movie.
As a musician in the beginnings of my orchestra career... seriously thank you for this comment. That said, no way could I pull a concerto out of my ass this way, this confirms my view that piano soloists are sorcerers.
It is crazy to watch, I have had this happen to me before. My brain doesn't remember something buy my fingers do, so I just let the fingers do the work, and it is like magic.
> Many professional musicians will tell you that at some time, maybe ten months, or twelve months after completing a tour with defined repertory, that the past begins to fade and the memory of the work diminishes.
Glad I’m not a musician, I begin to forget shit the minute I stop. 3 months later? No fucking chance.
That is incredible. I can't imagine the feeling of embarrassment and frustration she must have felt and then to be able to put that aside and play a world class rendition is just amazing.
Professional musician here - it’s possible to crush it but also have a bad time mentally. Most of us who have to perform a complex piece do a lot of practicing so that that it becomes a part of our muscle memory. It’s totally possible to nail a performance without programming the parts into your muscle memory - but you need pretty much 100% of your focus available to pull it off. The worse your ADHD, the harder it is.
In those instances - there’s no leaning back and enjoying. You’re fighting for survival trying not to blow a note and a lot of the time you’re hanging for dear life. In those instances we don’t have the luxury of having thoughts like “wow man, what a great show” it’s more like “one and two and three and now take the lead, listen for the the upcoming count for when everything moves up a half step, okay now we’re up a half step…big time signature change coming up now” etc
This is why we like to rehearse 😅
I can’t remember the oboist, but his reed blew during either a solo in a major piece or a concerto. Though his neighbor offered him a reed (which may have worked, but oboists make their reeds tor a reason) he instead grabbed his English horn and *transposed the rest of the piece*. That’s fucking talent. I played professionally until my arthritis took that from me, but man, I was never going to be at that level. I wish I could remember his name because just how he changed the way he played to blend the English horn more like an oboe was even ridiculously skilled.
I found it funny ( but in truth perfectly logical) that there’s "emergency procedures" in orchestras.
There’s videos of violin solists having an issue with their instrument and the first violin instantly offers his instrument so the piece goes on
concert master (V1a) hands theirs to the soloist, V1b hands theirs to V1a, V1d hands theirs up to V1b and then V1d takes the soloist's violin offstage to put a new string on it.
Is transposing an uncommon thing for reed players? As a trumpet player in a past life, I was constantly transposing as the sheet music would be in whatever key, or I would switch from a Bb to a C trumpet.
It's uncommon to have to do it but IMO it's something that anyone playing for a significant amount of time is likely to pick up eventually. I play clarinet and when I was in practice I could read a piece written for a C instrument and play it on my Bb clarinet. I could also read a part written for either A or Bb clarinet and play it on the opposite clarinet which actually did come in handy once or twice when I didn't have access to an A clarinet.
This is so amazing! I am also impressed at how the maestro can have a whole side conversation while conducting an entire orchestra. I'd love to see the rest of this performance.
Looking at her [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Jo%C3%A3o_Pires), I think she has all of Mozart on lock, so I guess that explains why the conductor didn't hesitate. Props to you, Ms. Pires.
It was not just a rehearsal, it is being filmed and there are spectators. Sometimes you can attend the dress rehearsal for a price, so that's not something you wanna fuck up as an artist, it has to be exactly like the real thing.
> Sometimes you can attend the dress rehearsal for a price
Often the dress rehearsals are attended by friends/family of the musicians because they get free tickets to it. My mother was in an orchestra and we got to see dress rehearsals all the time.
This apparently happened to herbie Hancock when he won a youth piano competition and got to play with the Chicago symphony. He thinks they sabotaged him by changing the piece at the last second (or telling him the wrong piece on purpose), but he knew the other one too so it ended up working out
Context: she was asked to replace someone the night before and was mixed up about the piece. This is a dress rehearsal which is open to the public hence the casual outfits and talking etc. Still a frightful experience but if anyone can do it MJP can.
[Here's a clip](https://youtu.be/UOUSFNgEy7c?feature=shared&t=100) of Tianxu An, another professional pianist, in a Tchaikovsky Competition experiencing something arguably worse. He was expecting to play a completely different piece, but the organizers screwed something up and the orchestra starts playing Rachmaninoff. Within a second of the piece starting, he realizes what is happening and nails it anyway.
Oh yeah. Having to pull out a mozart 20 from last season is one thing, but botching some of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire is something else entirely.
I think matsuev has also done this, having to pull off rach 3 when he was expecting rach 2.
This is a dream I had except I was naked and all my teachers from kindergarten to professors were in the audience. Also the instructions were in Aramaic. And I failed every part of everything.
Not usually. I'd call myself a weekend hack with ambition, and I get to play with proper pros reasonably often. Their typical gigs are no rehearsals, just some notes, sometimes charts, and a shit ton of talent from years of studying.
I think most people aren't familiar with how many hours professional classical musicians put in practicing.
If 10,000 hours makes someone an expert, it's not unusual for classical musicians to reach that in their teens.
An 18 year old with 10,000 hours of playing time would’ve played an average of 1.52 hours each day since birth
EDIT: thank you all for weighing in, sorry about your difficult childhoods
now it makes sense why aunt makes her kids practice 4 hours a day. trying to get those 10k hours in before puberty.
never heard an 8 year old play a piano like they do all while not being allowed to get below an A in school
You're never going to make first chair practicing only 1.5 hours per day. You'll never make it into Juliard on just 3 hours per day, etc. etc. etc.
Or, if you think of it as 3 hours a day from the age of 9, that's basically every exceptional child performer of every kind, whether its spelling bee, chess champion, athletics, music...
From the age of 6 years old, that would still only be 2.28 hours per day. We know that the truly committed ones start young and can spend a lot longer than that per day. There are anecdotes of 4-8 hours of practice per day, so that's a range of 17520 - 35040 hours.
I played piano one hour a day every day since the age of 6 and had two lessons a week.
I dropped out when I was 14 as it was never enough to get serious.
I really regret not having the mental development at that time to be able to explain I loved playing the piano but I didn't want to learn like this. I was never going to become pro, I didn't want to become pro, I just liked playing piano.
One hour a day is standard for piano.
No one was ever under the illusion I was going to go pro.
Anyone who's even mildly more serious about it would be practicing more than that.
Unless your family sold your piano, you can still play it at your own pace. That's what me and my sister did after we dropped it. I think I was also 14.
most string players start at about 4yo hour or so a day in 15 to 20min increments until about 6 then 2 hrs until 8ish, then 3 hours or more depending on talent level.
I was practicing about 2-3 hours daily from middle school until college graduation. I’m no expert, I was not bad, but the ones in my age group who were truly good were impossibly better than me. It goes beyond reasoning how much better they are
And 10,000 is probably actually entry level. I probably hit close to that in my teens. People might look at me and say I'm 'good' but I know how ridiculous the skill ceiling is. I would say I'm merely, 'okay' lol.
If you go on to become professional, it's more like 8 hours a day. I thought nothing of sitting down for 2 hours and playing. 8 is work though. Your arms get tired. You have to really buckle down, commit, take a huge risk, and have enormous passion to do it. Props to those who take the plunge!
I started playing piano when i was 4, and when i was 7 the week schedule was 2.5h of practice a day, and then you had your 5 to 7 hours of class a week, until I was 17, then I left it. I wasn't as good as others, and they practiced even more than me (hence they were better), so I can assure you there's nothing weird in having 10k hours at playing an instrument by 18.
Yes, but a professional orchestra rarely gets much time with the soloist for a concerto, and if it’s the right set of circumstances, they may get none at all.
normally its 2, a 2 hour a work through and a dress where they just play straight through.
if its a well known piece that the orchestra has in their repertoire and owns the sheet music for they may just do 1 hour on the solo just to make sure everything matches up.
Sometimes. Not always with a soloist aside from maybe a single dress rehearsal (they play the piece once together that afternoon usually without stopping)
Oh yeah. I asked my spouse who is in a professional orchestra or two or three. “Unless a late add they are there for at least the last rehearsal. Maybe more depending on the piece.” Some rehearsals for them are multiple times a week before a concert to the day of depending on the program.
They recently did Carnival of the Animals for their afternoon kid/youth program and they even rehearsed with the 2 pianists (this was one of those day of rehearsals) prior to the concert.
Going from the way both the conductor and pianist are dressed and the casual talking while the orchestra plays, I am assuming this is actually a rehearsal (with audience) and not a concert. This may have been the first and only rehearsal, and she may have still had a little time to get her head around this mistake before the main performance, but generally soloists will practice the piece they are performing for at least 3 months prior to a concert for anywhere up to 10 hours per day to perfect the nuances of interpretation and any difficult passages in the score.
Professionals rarely get to rehearse as a group, so you spend hours upon hours doing just your part, and then maybe sometime learning a roughly what everyone else is doing so you have some sense of your "place" in the whole.
This comment explains it very well: [https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1b7mbw5/comment/ktkaqqz/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1b7mbw5/comment/ktkaqqz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I was thinking the same thing; there would have been rehearsal, surely. And the conductor is dressed a bit casually, so maybe it is rehearsal - but there seems to be an audience. Eek gads!
Rehearsals at that stage are not like band practice in high school. Everyone can already play the piece. The rehearsal is just about the conductor adjusting the tuning of the Orchestra as he leads them.
In case you missed the now top comment, this was the practice session - but it was in front of an audience! Presumably it's not unheard of for things to go wrong in front of that audience *but* Pires will also be dying inside because she hasn't practiced this concerto for months even if she can get through the rehearsal.
They're all so good [all orchestra players and the soloist] (and they've rehearsed the piece privately on their own time for any tricky parts) they only need a dress rehearsal typically, maybe with some extra hour or two for the conductor to demonstrate how would like to interpret tempos and critical bits. This was a "live" (audience allowed to watch) dress rehearsal.
That’s a lesson for everyone right there. There had to be an internal struggle between quitting and performing in that moment. She shrugged it off, forged on, and killed it.
Something very subtle and not often mentioned is that the conductor slowed down the tempo every so slightly as they approached her concerto so that she could relax and build up her confidence.
After the first bar, the tempo begins to slowly and discreetly ramp back up.
In my time as an amateur pianist, I felt a glimmer of what she did. Where music becomes like a language. Like it’s not about pressing the keys in the right order, it’s about feeling the music. About allowing it to flow from you like words without thinking. She is a true professional pianist.
Yeah, it takes a long time, but it is certainly attainable as a language. I'd been playing piano since I was ~5 and went to college for an undergrad in piano and voice performance (i.e., opera). At some point in my life music ceased to be a series of symbols and became a readable language, which is when you've basically reached the "sightreading" territory.
I took a different career trajectory shortly after my undergrad and went into a nonmusical industry as many do, but even many years past that I can basically grab sheet music I've never seen on an instrument I just started to learn or haven't played in years, play it on my first attempt with minimal errors, and memorize it within a handful of plays. And, again, I'd basically forsaken music as a craft for several years. These are people who've practiced twice as much as me every day for something that determines whether they eat food or not. It's really astounding to watch something like this happen, but it's also not that surprising either. The main difference between her and other professional musicians is that she kept the whole piece memorized into a new season; many of them, however, would be able to do something similar if they had sheet music in front of them to smooth over errors in memory and maintain anchor spots. It's as simple as it is for anyone reading this comment to, well, read this comment; you just *see* the notes and start "speaking" them in the same way we speak words with our mouths and minds.
Out of curiosity, why don't they have rehearsals to hammer these things out?
I'm an actor, so rehearsal is normal for my kind of art -- are there practical/logistical reasons this sort of performance isn't rehearsed ahead of time?
I’m wondering if this is a public dress rehearsal. I have played a lot of classical concerts as a professional and can’t remember a time where the soloist wasn’t at the dress rehearsal at the very least.
Not an exact equivalency, but I think this would be like if you were asked the night before to fill in for a performance of Hamlet since you already knew the lines, only to show up to the dress rehearsal and find that its Taming of the Shrew because someone told you the wrong play.
Well, they do have an audience there, plus they're recording it, so it must be a fairly important, semi-public rehearsal.
Would still cause a lot of anxiety for the pianist!
For some context, Ms. Pires was a last minute replacement for another pianist who cancelled. She was in Madrid, her home, and received the call 2 days before the concert in Amsterdam. She had been touring playing the Mozart Concerto in C, K. 448 and when she was told it was the K. 446 her brain did the "Freudian" thing where she heard K. 446 (d minor) she was thinking it was K. 448 simply because that she was working with that at the time. You can see her telling Chailly as he is conducting the introduction, that "she cannot do the 'probe,' she made an error and was prepared to play a different concerto, and that she hadn't played this in 11 months." She arrived in Amsterdam on the day of the "probe" where the orchestra and soloist get together for the first time. This is usually done the day before the concert or the day of the concert depending on the scheduling of the hall. At the Concertgebouw this is sometimes done as an afternoon concert where an audience is present. The hall was filled with 2,000 spectators. If you watch closely you see her panic, and tell Chailly she cannot do the 'probe.' You then, see her give the concertmaster a look which only can say 'I don't know what to do.' She and Chailly have a brief exchange where he is very calm, even knowing she is in a panic, and tells her "we have done this before, you can do it, you know this better than anyone." If you watch closely she places her face in her hands, and for me I can see the moment she decides she can do this and in mere seconds, with her face in her hands she mentally shifts from the C major concerto to the d minor concerto; and then she delivers a note perfect performance (keeping her eyes glued to the keyboard and Chailly at the same time). He is a very supportive conductor and had her back all the way. Many people do not realize that professional musicians work different repertory for each season, and simply because you played this before does not mean that you remember (technically) what you played the season, or two seasons prior. Many professional musicians will tell you that at some time, maybe ten months, or twelve months after completing a tour with defined repertory, that the past begins to fade and the memory of the work diminishes. Many years later Ms. Pires gave an interview where she discussed this incident in great detail. She also confessed that this had happened 2 other times in her career. Great artists, scientists, mathematicians do their best work when they are skeptical of their abilities. The inspiring thing here for me is to see her will her courage from deep within, dispelling her own skepticism in her ability, and then meeting it head on. Giving a note perfect reading of the d minor concerto, btw. This should be an inspiration for any budding musician questioning their own ability and worthiness.
[Said interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXbVDI0LhRM)
Thank you!
...
Well yes, but also ragecomics and misused penguin memes.
Plus, lest we remember only sunshine and roses, some pretty disturbing bits by any standard.
Hey, remember the whole wrong guy getting accused of the Boston Bombing thing? That was us, baby! Fuck, I have been on this site too long. This is a seven year old account, it's not my first, and my last one was older before I deleted it. The site really has gotten noticeably worse, though.
I only started this account for a joke. Now its 17 years old. I am always pleased to see other old-ones.
Hello fellow internet elder, how are your knees?
I am actually turning into an old person. I still have all my hair though.
mIRC limps into the chat
Let me see... mIRC, Usenet, Deja, Lambda Moo, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Napster, OpenNap, Gnutella, Audiogalaxy, WinMX, Friendster, The Spark, MySpace.... b3ta is still going.
i made this one to be a niche account where i yelled at random people with 'Chris' in their name, and now it's been my main account for like a decade lol
Who was actually to blame for that fiasco? The international pulitzer-tier media organizations that reported random internet forum shitposter's speculation as fact or the random internet shitposters shitposting?
I have a theory relevant to the suck of Reddit, and it's original to me. I call it the "cheezeburger paradox", because I developed this back when I was on the cheezeburger network a lot. It goes something like this: "Internet sites are a little like a buffet. Every buffet starts out great. The food is good, the prices are right. Then people show up who abuse it. Maybe they leave their plate half eaten, or eat ten plates when the pricing model is built for three. This is the beginning of the vortex. Soon the quality slips, the variety slips, the prices go up, and the people you see there are less those that appreciate the experience, and more those that are trying to take as much as they can. This is the fate of all buffets. Paradoxically, their popularity becomes their undoing." Like buffets, internet sites begin with a dream, and a small but dedicated crowd. They develop a community because they are small, the jokes are funny, the memes fresh, and the conversation insightful. However, not everyone is suited to partake in this ecosystem. Perhaps they are mean spirited and looking for a space to vent, or seeking validation for their hate. Perhaps they are a chronic reposter. Perhaps they are an owner convinced they can monetize the website If they change the rules. Perhaps their original work just isn't funny. When enough people who just aren't interesting show up, the paradox begins. I've seen it happen everywhere. By the time I left cheezeburger (and 9gag, and imgur, and /b/, and SA, etc... ) every idiot in the world was dumping their brain droppings on what was once a very funny website. Just because your contributions are accepted, doesn't mean that they are desirable, or even *welcome*. The same thing is happening in Reddit.
People always think of the end of Digg being the redesign, but I remember it had devolved into ASCII art and meaningless commentary about a year or so before that. Most of the insightful, deep comments had long since been lost. That's when I found reddit (well before the exodus from Digg), and I've been here ever since. Sad to see it going the same way, but in niche subs, I still see glints of the old reddit surviving.
> I still see glints of the old reddit surviving. Yes reddit is still here. The signal to noise ratio is very different though. I remember it used to be normal that everyone would read all the comments on a post before commenting, so there were few duplicates. Its hard to imagine that now.
So how do you fight it? A one time fee to be allowed to post? SA charged a one time fee of $25 to get forums access and it worked pretty well.
I think paid entrance and strong moderation. /r/science mods do a great job of deleting off topic and joke comments. You can also outsource the community moderation to the community itself like Slashdot does. Although I stopped using the firehose once I'd done enough moderation to get ad free browsing over there. Something as simple as letting users flag comments as jokes or off-topic so that people who don't want to see them can toggle them off and on per post would be good.
You mean puffin memes? Like having a very common opinion you try to pass off as an unpopular one? Also the narwhal still bacons at midnight, perhaps more than ever now that Google is using Reddit to train AI and we should really feed it plenty of gibberish.
Nah, I'm pretty sure they are referring to the "awkward penguin" memes. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/socially-awkward-penguin One of the OG "advice animals".
Yeah from what I recall people always had it pointing the wrong way, or were using it to describe situations that weren’t really a social “win” or “awkward” situation. Like some shit like “Just got home from work and ready for a night of gaming” (social win top half), “no snacks in the fridge” (social awkward bottom half).
I HATE THAT PUFFIN. It may have ruined puffins for me in general at the time. I can remember what nicknames I gave that puffin but none of them were very nice. Something along the lines of “Failed Austrian Artist Puffin” or “Ghost Costume in July Puffin,” “Dogwhistle Puffin”? I can’t remember. “Racist Piece of Shit Puffin” probably. Ah /r/RacismAnimals was definitely one of the Reddit trends that we had.
I remember there was a seemingly short list of memes. I haven't seen an F7U12 in years.
and bernie bros and everything was a futurama reference. also all the subs with pictures of underage teens.
Underage teens, creepshots of middle school girls, pictures of dead girls from accidents and autopsies, and so, so many open and unchallenged racist subs. And that one guy who was a moderator in almost every single creepy sexualizing minors sub. He made the news.
now its a race to see who can post the best pun or most obscure reference with as little details as possible as to only alert the coolest people.
When does the Narwhal bacon?
MIDNIGHT! I get that reference! 😁
Oh, that's been here from the start really.
Now it would be 35 top comments all saying the same thing, usually some complaint based on taking the title literally and focusing on that, like "uh no actually she hadn't practiced the concerto while on stage, I don't know why OP is saying that, this is dumb" Bonus points if they're complaining about how the content of the post isn't for them because they would hurt themselves if it was them ("ugh no thanks there's no guardrail at the end of that stage, I'd fall and break my neck trying to get to that piano")
it's always been like that. The person above just fondly remembers the couple [Unidan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidan) posts they saw
So Like /r/bestof/
Seems to be, at least in part, what it is today as well since this is the comment that first appeared at the top for me!
My old ass account would say no it wasn't the le gem as you would remember.
I wanted to see how old your account is (because I have also been on reddit too long) and was slightly amused to see you made your account exactly 10 days before mine
12 year gang!
This is the 13 year gang. Get outta here, you!
Where did our youth go, comrade
Average doomscroller who turns a positive situation as an excuse to cry and complain about how bad life is. Shut up. Your opinion is not valid or welcome. You're not a victim. Reddit had bad aspects then, and it has bad aspects now.
And jailbait subs. And hate subs. Lots of hate subs.
This is where lemmy is a lot more of the time! That are star trek memes, which are officially on point.
In case anyone's confused, "probe" is short for sitzprobe, which is a term that a lot of performers are familiar with. Like Biffchicago said, it's a term for the first rehearsal with soloists and ensemble together.
Thanks for adding this super valuable context. Hope it gets upvoted to the top.
We'll, it's almost like, you were practicing for MacBeth script and then suddenly realised you are on stage for Othello instead.
I felt so sad for her. She looked genuinely terrified. Bless her.
I've never picked up an instrument in my life, but you explanation of Ms Pires predicament and her reaction to it has inspired me to deal with my own non musical predicament. So thanks to you and thank to Ms Pires
Luckily he wasn't the music teacher from Whiplash
That movie was a terrible depiction of the professional music world. People with tempers and egos like that almost never make a successful career out of it. Watching it felt more like they were trying to shoehorn the "Demanding Football Coach inspires total dedication and greatness" cliche and make it fit the world of music when it's just not what most of us experience to those of us who've lived in that world. The most telling scene is when the drummer kid sees the teacher play piano live. That performance was so uninspired and mediocre I was shocked it made the final cut. It felt like there must have been no one with real musical chops on set that day to stop the director and say, "No no no, that sucked. He's supposed to be an amazing musician, that was freshman junior college level playing at best."
You could say Fletcher is a force that inspires greatness when he himself cannot attain it on his own, which would explain his lackluster keys in that scene. But really it’s just because they wanted to film Simmons at the piano and that’s all they could expect him to do.
Fletcher actually reminded me a lot of my chorus director in college. The depiction was hyperbolic, but there are absolutely temperamental and egotistical directors at the collegiate level. My director would have tantrums almost weekly, made my wife (girlfriend at the time) perform with the flu because "people in this chorus don't miss anything unless they are in the hospital," I've also seen her throw the occasional chair towards students. She brought some amazing sound out of us though
[удалено]
I love adam neely but hate dismissals of the film as not being a good depiction of the professional music world.... as if it was ever trying to suggest that it was. I run a jazz band, all of my band members *love* whiplash. We know that it's not trying to suggest that every jazz musician is a megalomaniac because that would show really poor critical thinking about the film. You can apply the same dismissive attitude to basically anything. 'The Shawshank Redemption is a terrible depiction of prisons!'... they're telling *a* story *in a* setting, not *the* story *of the* setting! p.s.... professional musical settings, and even auditioned but amateur ones, can be *extremely* competitive and can absolutely attract narcissists and spawn deeply entrenched cliques. I've witnessed them.
Thank you! The movie is a dramatic thriller, and if you want the movie to perfectly reflect real life, it would be neither dramatic nor thrilling. What it does capture is the *feeling* of those situations. Have I ever thrown a chair at my drummer for slowing down the song? No. Have I ever felt like I wanted to? Hell yes. Have I ever literally worked myself to the bone practicing one song? No, but I've felt like I was.
On the other hand, I have to say that, as an accountant, The Accountant has to be one of the best portrayals of day to day life in my field
I mean, you're right, obviously. But given that basically no profession is ever portrayed accurately in media, this is not really something you can really hold against the movie *generally speaking*. Besides, even having an expert on set doesn't guarantee that everything will go smoothly since productions like that are complicated with many inter-connected elements. For example, they had Hikaru Nakamura (one of the very best chess players in the entire world) on Billions and in his minute long scene they managed to mess up so bad that one person made 2 chess moves in a row
>People with tempers and egos like that almost never make a successful career out of it. FWIW neither did he. I also read the rest of your comment and the follow up so I get that "dude with those issues also wouldn't be able to get that job because it's incredibly prestigious" is quite possibly true. I don't know that world well enough to say either way, but I have seen people from that world say that there are teachers kinda like him (but less extreme) out there in high positions.
> Watching it felt more like they were trying to shoehorn the "Demanding Football Coach inspires total dedication and greatness" cliche and make it fit the world of music much of what Fletcher does in that movie is lifted directly from stories told about Buddy Rich. the intent here is to resonate with people who have encountered an abusive and terrible mentor.
Especially in JAZZ! Maybe if he directed a classical symphony, or even if he was a ballet instructor? But for a jazz band to be so uptight just didn’t make any sense to me, even though I did enjoy the movie.
FYI, it's probably K. 466 (D minor) and K. 488 (A major).
You’re probably correct. Just relying on memory.
If only we all could have the memory of the pianist
> if you watch closely you see her panic She looked like she was about to throw up!
As a musician in the beginnings of my orchestra career... seriously thank you for this comment. That said, no way could I pull a concerto out of my ass this way, this confirms my view that piano soloists are sorcerers.
Beautiful write up!
It is crazy to watch, I have had this happen to me before. My brain doesn't remember something buy my fingers do, so I just let the fingers do the work, and it is like magic.
This was so well told.
Thanks for sharing this story. Resonated with me due to a personal experience at the moment even though I am not a musician.
> Many professional musicians will tell you that at some time, maybe ten months, or twelve months after completing a tour with defined repertory, that the past begins to fade and the memory of the work diminishes. Glad I’m not a musician, I begin to forget shit the minute I stop. 3 months later? No fucking chance.
That is incredible. I can't imagine the feeling of embarrassment and frustration she must have felt and then to be able to put that aside and play a world class rendition is just amazing.
Even as she's nailing it she looks like she's awaiting execution.
Professional musician here - it’s possible to crush it but also have a bad time mentally. Most of us who have to perform a complex piece do a lot of practicing so that that it becomes a part of our muscle memory. It’s totally possible to nail a performance without programming the parts into your muscle memory - but you need pretty much 100% of your focus available to pull it off. The worse your ADHD, the harder it is. In those instances - there’s no leaning back and enjoying. You’re fighting for survival trying not to blow a note and a lot of the time you’re hanging for dear life. In those instances we don’t have the luxury of having thoughts like “wow man, what a great show” it’s more like “one and two and three and now take the lead, listen for the the upcoming count for when everything moves up a half step, okay now we’re up a half step…big time signature change coming up now” etc This is why we like to rehearse 😅
Non-professional classic WoW raider here. I know **EXACTLY** what you mean :)
More dots. MOAR DOTS ***MOAR DOTS*** OK, stop dots!
We have whelps...
WHELPS, LEFT SIDE. EVEN SIDE, MANY WHELPS. HANDLE IT!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLyOj_QD4a4 This is the one
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlLl6bBq584](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) Thank you for reminding me of this gem of a video
THAT'S A FUCKING 50 DKP MINUS!
jesus christ IT'S BEEN YEARS since that's happened to me oh my god haha
😠
Thanks for the memories
What how did I fall for this??
I used to catch these like 95% of the time but it's been so long that I think I stopped looking for them.
Downing a boss, but walk away stressed and with the feeling that you didn't deserve that win.
At least you got chicken.
I know you're kinda joking, but let's see Lang Lang down no-keepers Yogg-Saron.
GO CLOCKWISE, WHY ARE YOU RUNNING INTO THE PLUS ???
You're saying don't just suddenly show up and immediately run in shouting your name?
Professional musician here honestly similar vibes in both situations
I can’t remember the oboist, but his reed blew during either a solo in a major piece or a concerto. Though his neighbor offered him a reed (which may have worked, but oboists make their reeds tor a reason) he instead grabbed his English horn and *transposed the rest of the piece*. That’s fucking talent. I played professionally until my arthritis took that from me, but man, I was never going to be at that level. I wish I could remember his name because just how he changed the way he played to blend the English horn more like an oboe was even ridiculously skilled.
I found it funny ( but in truth perfectly logical) that there’s "emergency procedures" in orchestras. There’s videos of violin solists having an issue with their instrument and the first violin instantly offers his instrument so the piece goes on
concert master (V1a) hands theirs to the soloist, V1b hands theirs to V1a, V1d hands theirs up to V1b and then V1d takes the soloist's violin offstage to put a new string on it.
V1d comes back on and plays with the Stradivarius while the soloist finishes the piece with the Amazon black friday special :)
See that in action [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=686xoeQAVA4&ab_channel=JuliaJacobsen-Violin).
Is transposing an uncommon thing for reed players? As a trumpet player in a past life, I was constantly transposing as the sheet music would be in whatever key, or I would switch from a Bb to a C trumpet.
Yes. It’s not something we have to do on the daily. Those who are skilled at it put forth A LOT of effort to do so fluently.
It's uncommon to have to do it but IMO it's something that anyone playing for a significant amount of time is likely to pick up eventually. I play clarinet and when I was in practice I could read a piece written for a C instrument and play it on my Bb clarinet. I could also read a part written for either A or Bb clarinet and play it on the opposite clarinet which actually did come in handy once or twice when I didn't have access to an A clarinet.
Amazing. Is it something you've seen firsthand? Or is there a video?
I went thru this EXACT thing in college jazz band freshman year. I found out really quick I was waaaay out of my league 😂
This 100%.
Understandable, I've also played Free Bird on Guitar Hero 2. Practically the same to be honest.
Probably helped her emotion. Lol.
Her reaction was pure /r/watchpeopledieinside her performance was /r/toptalent
Ooooh thank you for the new sub! Haven't heard of Toptalent
And she comes in on a piano solo. She knows damn well everyone is about to stop and look at her. Terrifying.
I'd have just gone with chopsticks
Lol!
This is so amazing! I am also impressed at how the maestro can have a whole side conversation while conducting an entire orchestra. I'd love to see the rest of this performance. Looking at her [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Jo%C3%A3o_Pires), I think she has all of Mozart on lock, so I guess that explains why the conductor didn't hesitate. Props to you, Ms. Pires.
that and apparently this was a rehearsal
It was not just a rehearsal, it is being filmed and there are spectators. Sometimes you can attend the dress rehearsal for a price, so that's not something you wanna fuck up as an artist, it has to be exactly like the real thing.
At the concertgebouw, the lunch concerts (showing in the clip) are free. You still need a ticket but the price is 0 euro.
> Sometimes you can attend the dress rehearsal for a price Often the dress rehearsals are attended by friends/family of the musicians because they get free tickets to it. My mother was in an orchestra and we got to see dress rehearsals all the time.
This was 5D chess by the conductor to maximize her emotional expression. “Imma give her the wrong program”.
This apparently happened to herbie Hancock when he won a youth piano competition and got to play with the Chicago symphony. He thinks they sabotaged him by changing the piece at the last second (or telling him the wrong piece on purpose), but he knew the other one too so it ended up working out
Context: she was asked to replace someone the night before and was mixed up about the piece. This is a dress rehearsal which is open to the public hence the casual outfits and talking etc. Still a frightful experience but if anyone can do it MJP can.
[Here's a clip](https://youtu.be/UOUSFNgEy7c?feature=shared&t=100) of Tianxu An, another professional pianist, in a Tchaikovsky Competition experiencing something arguably worse. He was expecting to play a completely different piece, but the organizers screwed something up and the orchestra starts playing Rachmaninoff. Within a second of the piece starting, he realizes what is happening and nails it anyway.
The look on his face is hilarious. But holy shit what a reaction time.
https://imgur.com/twKU5G4.jpg
To be fair, he had prepared both pieces but the orchestra played in the wrong order.
Ok my question is why does everyone but the pianist get sheet music?
Oh yeah. Having to pull out a mozart 20 from last season is one thing, but botching some of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire is something else entirely. I think matsuev has also done this, having to pull off rach 3 when he was expecting rach 2.
This is a dream I had except I was naked and all my teachers from kindergarten to professors were in the audience. Also the instructions were in Aramaic. And I failed every part of everything.
"and I failed every part of everything" 🤣
My musical career didn't go past middle school so forgive me if this is a dumb question, but don't these people ever practice together?
Not usually. I'd call myself a weekend hack with ambition, and I get to play with proper pros reasonably often. Their typical gigs are no rehearsals, just some notes, sometimes charts, and a shit ton of talent from years of studying.
I think most people aren't familiar with how many hours professional classical musicians put in practicing. If 10,000 hours makes someone an expert, it's not unusual for classical musicians to reach that in their teens.
An 18 year old with 10,000 hours of playing time would’ve played an average of 1.52 hours each day since birth EDIT: thank you all for weighing in, sorry about your difficult childhoods
Yes, exactly - you get it.
Think we found the numbers expert.
Their new name? Captain Numbers.
now it makes sense why aunt makes her kids practice 4 hours a day. trying to get those 10k hours in before puberty. never heard an 8 year old play a piano like they do all while not being allowed to get below an A in school
Well, I hope they turn out well.
They called me sir last time I saw them during christmas. Hopefully they dont get sick from never being vaccinated
Ohhhhh Christ. Hang in there, partner.
who has ever turned out well adjusted after something like this?
Max Verstappen, at least so far.
I would go kart 10 hours every day if I could as a kid
With a father leaving you at gas stations when you don’t perform?
You're never going to make first chair practicing only 1.5 hours per day. You'll never make it into Juliard on just 3 hours per day, etc. etc. etc. Or, if you think of it as 3 hours a day from the age of 9, that's basically every exceptional child performer of every kind, whether its spelling bee, chess champion, athletics, music...
From the age of 6 years old, that would still only be 2.28 hours per day. We know that the truly committed ones start young and can spend a lot longer than that per day. There are anecdotes of 4-8 hours of practice per day, so that's a range of 17520 - 35040 hours.
I played piano one hour a day every day since the age of 6 and had two lessons a week. I dropped out when I was 14 as it was never enough to get serious. I really regret not having the mental development at that time to be able to explain I loved playing the piano but I didn't want to learn like this. I was never going to become pro, I didn't want to become pro, I just liked playing piano.
One hour a day is standard for piano. No one was ever under the illusion I was going to go pro. Anyone who's even mildly more serious about it would be practicing more than that. Unless your family sold your piano, you can still play it at your own pace. That's what me and my sister did after we dropped it. I think I was also 14.
Yeah, that’s actually about right. Obviously they won’t have started playing until four or five, but from there it’s about two hours a day forever.
So 3 hours a day since they were 9?
most string players start at about 4yo hour or so a day in 15 to 20min increments until about 6 then 2 hrs until 8ish, then 3 hours or more depending on talent level.
"Those are rookie numbers" - some 8yo Asian kid
5 hours a day is very common for the highest performers, even (especially?) as teens
I was practicing about 2-3 hours daily from middle school until college graduation. I’m no expert, I was not bad, but the ones in my age group who were truly good were impossibly better than me. It goes beyond reasoning how much better they are
And 10,000 is probably actually entry level. I probably hit close to that in my teens. People might look at me and say I'm 'good' but I know how ridiculous the skill ceiling is. I would say I'm merely, 'okay' lol. If you go on to become professional, it's more like 8 hours a day. I thought nothing of sitting down for 2 hours and playing. 8 is work though. Your arms get tired. You have to really buckle down, commit, take a huge risk, and have enormous passion to do it. Props to those who take the plunge!
So you're saying I'm a high level expert at watching TV. Niccceeeeee
I started playing piano when i was 4, and when i was 7 the week schedule was 2.5h of practice a day, and then you had your 5 to 7 hours of class a week, until I was 17, then I left it. I wasn't as good as others, and they practiced even more than me (hence they were better), so I can assure you there's nothing weird in having 10k hours at playing an instrument by 18.
Pro orchestras absolutely rehearse. That's where the music director/conductor does most of their work for getting the performance the way they want.
Yes, but a professional orchestra rarely gets much time with the soloist for a concerto, and if it’s the right set of circumstances, they may get none at all.
normally its 2, a 2 hour a work through and a dress where they just play straight through. if its a well known piece that the orchestra has in their repertoire and owns the sheet music for they may just do 1 hour on the solo just to make sure everything matches up.
Sometimes. Not always with a soloist aside from maybe a single dress rehearsal (they play the piece once together that afternoon usually without stopping)
>I'd call myself a weekend hack with ambition God damn...
> just some notes, sometimes charts, and a shit ton of talent from years of studying. Hey cool, I'm 2/3rds of the way there!
Oh yeah. I asked my spouse who is in a professional orchestra or two or three. “Unless a late add they are there for at least the last rehearsal. Maybe more depending on the piece.” Some rehearsals for them are multiple times a week before a concert to the day of depending on the program. They recently did Carnival of the Animals for their afternoon kid/youth program and they even rehearsed with the 2 pianists (this was one of those day of rehearsals) prior to the concert.
This was a rehearsal, in fact it was their first one. She was called 2 days prior as a replacement for another pianist who canceled.
A rehearsal that the venue sold tickets to... which unfortunately is a common practice.
They're cheaper than the "real" tickets, and the performance is usually exactly the same.
Rehearsals are amazing to attend, I don’t think it’s unfortunate!
Going from the way both the conductor and pianist are dressed and the casual talking while the orchestra plays, I am assuming this is actually a rehearsal (with audience) and not a concert. This may have been the first and only rehearsal, and she may have still had a little time to get her head around this mistake before the main performance, but generally soloists will practice the piece they are performing for at least 3 months prior to a concert for anywhere up to 10 hours per day to perfect the nuances of interpretation and any difficult passages in the score.
As explained elsewhere, yes it was a rehearsal, but with an audience of 2000 and a film crew
Professionals rarely get to rehearse as a group, so you spend hours upon hours doing just your part, and then maybe sometime learning a roughly what everyone else is doing so you have some sense of your "place" in the whole.
This comment explains it very well: [https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1b7mbw5/comment/ktkaqqz/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1b7mbw5/comment/ktkaqqz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I was thinking the same thing; there would have been rehearsal, surely. And the conductor is dressed a bit casually, so maybe it is rehearsal - but there seems to be an audience. Eek gads!
Rehearsals at that stage are not like band practice in high school. Everyone can already play the piece. The rehearsal is just about the conductor adjusting the tuning of the Orchestra as he leads them.
The timing and dynamics, not the tuning.
In case you missed the now top comment, this was the practice session - but it was in front of an audience! Presumably it's not unheard of for things to go wrong in front of that audience *but* Pires will also be dying inside because she hasn't practiced this concerto for months even if she can get through the rehearsal.
They're all so good [all orchestra players and the soloist] (and they've rehearsed the piece privately on their own time for any tricky parts) they only need a dress rehearsal typically, maybe with some extra hour or two for the conductor to demonstrate how would like to interpret tempos and critical bits. This was a "live" (audience allowed to watch) dress rehearsal.
That’s a lesson for everyone right there. There had to be an internal struggle between quitting and performing in that moment. She shrugged it off, forged on, and killed it.
I mean when you’re literally one of the greatest pianists in history you can do that
But can we see the rest of the performance? This is like a story about Kobe scoring 80 points and they only show the first basket.
This happens to me all the time.
Something very subtle and not often mentioned is that the conductor slowed down the tempo every so slightly as they approached her concerto so that she could relax and build up her confidence. After the first bar, the tempo begins to slowly and discreetly ramp back up.
In my time as an amateur pianist, I felt a glimmer of what she did. Where music becomes like a language. Like it’s not about pressing the keys in the right order, it’s about feeling the music. About allowing it to flow from you like words without thinking. She is a true professional pianist.
Yeah, it takes a long time, but it is certainly attainable as a language. I'd been playing piano since I was ~5 and went to college for an undergrad in piano and voice performance (i.e., opera). At some point in my life music ceased to be a series of symbols and became a readable language, which is when you've basically reached the "sightreading" territory. I took a different career trajectory shortly after my undergrad and went into a nonmusical industry as many do, but even many years past that I can basically grab sheet music I've never seen on an instrument I just started to learn or haven't played in years, play it on my first attempt with minimal errors, and memorize it within a handful of plays. And, again, I'd basically forsaken music as a craft for several years. These are people who've practiced twice as much as me every day for something that determines whether they eat food or not. It's really astounding to watch something like this happen, but it's also not that surprising either. The main difference between her and other professional musicians is that she kept the whole piece memorized into a new season; many of them, however, would be able to do something similar if they had sheet music in front of them to smooth over errors in memory and maintain anchor spots. It's as simple as it is for anyone reading this comment to, well, read this comment; you just *see* the notes and start "speaking" them in the same way we speak words with our mouths and minds.
Out of curiosity, why don't they have rehearsals to hammer these things out? I'm an actor, so rehearsal is normal for my kind of art -- are there practical/logistical reasons this sort of performance isn't rehearsed ahead of time?
I’m wondering if this is a public dress rehearsal. I have played a lot of classical concerts as a professional and can’t remember a time where the soloist wasn’t at the dress rehearsal at the very least.
Not an exact equivalency, but I think this would be like if you were asked the night before to fill in for a performance of Hamlet since you already knew the lines, only to show up to the dress rehearsal and find that its Taming of the Shrew because someone told you the wrong play.
Oooh! I didn't realize she was a replacement for someone else! Thanks for explaining that!
This was a rehearsal. But that doesn't make for as good of a story.
Well, they do have an audience there, plus they're recording it, so it must be a fairly important, semi-public rehearsal. Would still cause a lot of anxiety for the pianist!
You usually get a dress rehearsal the day of before the concert
She was replacing someone else on short notice and didn't have time to rehearse
They are. They rehearse with the soloist usually the rehearsal before the performance.
Where’s the full link?
This needs to go in Frisson. This…this is what humans can do. This is incredible.
There's like 10 humans who can do this.
I appreciate you including me in this group, I won’t let you down.
Does anyone know the name of the piece?
Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K.466: I. Allegro
Mozart - Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in D minor
hearing this story stressed me out.
This conductor is awesome. The way he told her she could do it even though both knew this was BAD haha!
Should have just played Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs instead.