No, No, This One ACTUALLY Takes the Biscuit

I have yet to understand the expectations for a classical music concert in Mexico.

After being a professional musician for going on three years, my expectations have lowered significantly from my days of an idealistic student. Now, when I go to a professional orchestra’s concert, pretty much the only thing I expect is to hear the pieces played without stopping. Everything else is up to chance. But I at least expect them to get through the damn piece from start to finish without any interruption.

These expectations have been disappointed twice now. The first time I was playing.

I put the responsibility of “not stopping” on the conductor. As long as he keeps flapping his arms, chances are at least 75% of the orchestra will keep trudging along, no matter what happens, and they’ll squeak through to the end. Of course, if the conductor cuts the orchestra off, they will stop playing, like the obedient followers of authority they are. It’s simple really.

Last night I attended this orchestra’s (if you bother to read this article, you'll conjure up another conversation about expectations, that is, that you can't have them for newspapers in Mexico...) performance of Petrushka. I was looking forward to the performance for a few reasons, and dreading it for a few others. Firstly, I had spent the week getting to know and playing with the members of this quintet, also the principal brass players in the orchestra. I knew that if all else failed, these guys would pull through. Also, I’ve been invited to play Mahler’s 1st Symphony with the group in two weeks, so I was excited for the opportunity to hear the orchestra in performance a few weeks before my first rehearsal with them.

I was, however, in sheer terror of a few artistic choices. In order to make the piece more accessible, the artistic director had decided to coordinate the performance of the piece with a video of the original performance of the ballet. While an interesting idea, in reality, the logistical nightmare sort of took the fun out of it. In order to coordinate the music with the on-screen dancing, the conductor had to time his orchestra’s piece perfectly to the recording of the orchestra playing in the video. This required him to conduct one of the most challenging ensemble pieces in the repertoire WITH HEADPHONES. I was already unimpressed.

It was obvious in the dress rehearsal that the concert was not just going to be the opposite of making music in the present, but basically a train-wreck. If the pianist was slightly behind, so what, he had to charge ahead with the tempo of the recorded pianist. If the flautist dropped a beat, well, there was no adjusting.

As I said to the brass guys before the show, “Oh man, anything could happen with this tonight!” and as they said to me, “Oh yes, and anything WILL happen.”

I didn’t know how spot on they were.

Everything began more or less as planned and continued along “smoothly” until about ¾ the way through when the video screen just went blue. I, personally, was thrilled, since I took it to mean the recording in the maestro’s ears was silenced as well. The ensemble immediately got better, the energy heightened. I started to really get pulled into the music.

This glimmer of hope lasted for about 5 minutes, until, in the middle of a phrase, the conductor STOPPED THE ORCHESTRA. Bam. There goes my chance of my one expectation being fulfilled.

He turned around, apologized to the audience for the technical difficulty, and begged for their forgiveness and patience while they worked out the glitch, in order to finish off the piece with the video.

I was devastated. Just when I was starting to really enjoy it, he stopped, to give priority to my least favorite part of the project.

After a bit of fumbling around, said conductor announced that unfortunately, it appeared impossible to start the video and recording in the middle of the piece. He then proceeded to GIVE THE AUDIENCE 2 OPTIONS.

1) Hear the rest of the piece without video.
2) Start the piece over with video.

Besides the hilariousness of having the audience vote on how to solve a serious problem (it’s sort of like a bizarre mixture of an orchestra concert and Family Feud!) I also really enjoyed the priceless look on all the brass players’ faces at the thought of starting over, after already playing a dress rehearsal that morning, and an almost complete run.

Luckily the audience voted (or the conductor interpreted various mumbles) for option 1.

They started at part 4, and continued without event.

I don’t get it- what’s going on in the head of the man on the podium? Should not the flow of the music, the inertia of a great work, be enough to make it obvious that stopping in the middle is simply not an option???

But the thing I found even more flabbergasting was that the majority of audience members and performers hardly seemed phased afterwards. I would say, “Can you believe what happened?!?” and they would say, “What?” and I’d say, “When the conductor stopped?!?” and they would say, “Oh, yeah, that” and throw in a little giggle probably just to humor me. Why weren’t people more disturbed by this? Is this a Mexican thing?

It’s true, it’s 2007, and classical music is changing. Call me old-fashioned, but I’d just like to hear a piece played the good-old-all-the-way-through-without-stopping-in-a-performance way.