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Re: How Embarrassing?!

Author: kroboe
Date: 2005-08-19 13:43

Well, here is one for you:
I can never forget one incident that happened early in my amateur career. We were playing one of Mozarts violin concertos with a very good soloist. I was playing principal oboe. I was rather unexprienced, did not know the music well and was very nervous. So, in the middle of the first movement I lost count of the bars. I turned to the second oboe for help, but she just stared back at me. Ohh, ... help!! I turned the page in panic and stared helplessly at the music for clues. Soon a naked oboe solo would be coming up! A succession of decending eights over two bars, later on repeated in a different key. I just had to hope that I would recognise the music when the time for my solo came. So I waited with my heart pounding wildly. But it took such a long time! Maybe they had already passed my first solo! Yes, that must be it. Now, watch the second solo in that different key! There... there it was! I played the solo.... flawlessly.... in the wrong key!!!! Jeeesus!! From the back of the hall I could hear someone laugh! How the soloist managed to go on undisturbed is beyond me! I was soaked in sweat, my heart was beating like mad, and I just wanted to vanish. It was terrible. The next day we repeated the same concert in another city, an I made no mistakes! That undoubtedly was my best medicine! Over the years this has become a funny story, one of many in fact. I learned that your only option when you become less than 100% certain of an entry is not to play at all, and I learned also that you have to accept mistakes as part of your life as a musician, and to just laugh it off an get on with it.
kroboe

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