Jaap puts Paris orchestra in a flap
NewsWe hear of a major mishap at last night’s Shostakovich fifth symphony at the Orchestre de Paris, conducted by Jaap van Zweden in place of the sanctioned Valery Gergiev.
A few moments into the symphony, Van Zweden stopped the orchestra because the first violins were not playing together.
After a brief pause, he restarted the symphony and the outcome was excellent.
Our eyewitness reports: ‘I am in Philharmonie de Paris this night with Orchestre de Paris. Stand-in conductor Jaap van Zveden was conducting Shostakovich 5 before the break. He had to interrupt the Orchestra after 15-20 bars because of serious disorder in the first violins.
‘After restart/reboot he and the Orchestra made a very fine performance. I have NEVER seen something like this before with a top professional ensemble.’
The only instance we can recall was the BBC Symphony Orchestra breaking down in the first performance of Michael Tippett’s second symphony, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult in February 1958. Boult promptly turned to the audience and announced ‘entirely my mistake, ladies and gentlemen.’
No such humility among modern maestros.
I was there.He did absolutely right.
It was a big mistake from half of the first violin section.
It was the only right thing to do.
Performance was fantastic and he is one of the great conductors we have.
Thats it!!!!
Not a big deal NORMAN.
Concerning the first violins, Jaap knows the subject very well…. I trust him…. but I don’t want to blame the musicians like eveybody they can make mistakes. I know very well the Orchestre de Paris, it’s not the RCO or the Gewandhaus yes… but it’s a very good orchestra and they are playing a lot of diffrent musics in an audacious way. They don’t choose always the most easy things to play and sometimes it could be not fantastic and it could excellent like the Brahms concerts they did with Blomstedt I have seen I will never forget.
It’s Shosti 5, pretty standard. they should know it. Did they think he was in 4 when he was in 8 or the other way around or something? Basses and cellos come in first kids.
I agree, it can be very generous and sometimes very average. Paavo improved it, but Harding was a tough time. The young Finn brings good vibes. Recently heard a bad Ravel concert with Gimeno and an excellent and radiant Alpine symphony with Makela. The change a venue at philarmonie was a decisive turnpoint in the history of the orchestra….
Hahaha. Just for the record….. this is NOT my comment.
But I agree the performance was fantastic.
The Orchestre de Paris actually posted their rehearsal video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaDGJ5hnFVo
They sounded pretty damn together at rehearsal!
Based on what I heard in New York, Jaap does not strike me as being among the great conductors of today. I’ll be glad when his engagement here (NYC) is over with.
Are they great conductors in our times at the level of Toscanini Walter and such? Doubt it. There are some very good ones and good ones. Jaap belongs more to the latter…. probably he should have stayed first violin.I remember a dull Tchaikovsky Manfred in Paris…. how can anyone make this work un remarkable ?
Jaap is only human! The music was not computerized.
I wasn’t there, but if christian is correct in saying “half” the first violin section made a mistake, then either the piece was under-rehearsed or the conductor made a mistake. Conductors can make mistakes too (though they rarely admit to them).
Shortly after the OSR started playing a Webern piece at Victoria Hall during the 1960-61 season, some members of the orchestra started giggling uncontrollably, seemingly uncomfortable with the music. Ansermet halted the performance for a minute or two, the players regained their composure, and he restarted the piece.
Was anyone else there?
I was at a VPO performance of “La Mer” in Graz in the early 90s, and the audience was audibly uncomfortable with the idiom. It takes all kinds of ignorance.
Giggling at Webern… Can’t imagine the work, but I was 2 then. Crying, yes.
Uncomfortable with “La Mer”??? Zut alors!
Is there an excellent recording of this work with them? Don’t think so .
Debussy is often lacking substance to German and Austrian ears, also the logic of that music is so different from German music. So, it is not a matter of ignorance but of ways of perception.
That’s showed that in music nothing is acquired. And that if you are a guest conductor nothing is always easy. it was not the first time that Jaap works in Paris with that orchestra. And that don’t mean that it will be the last.
Welser-Möst had to start the third movement of the Berg Kammerkonzert three times in Cleveland. Nasty bit of writing, that, but even so… He and the orchestra lived to see another day. Stuff happens. There’s a live Toscanini Pathetique broadcast that all but falls apart in the first movement transition. He didn’t stop, but I bet contemplated seppuku after mass murder.
A similar thing happened at a Shostakovich 5 in the Royal Festival Hall, years ago, the composer’s son Maxim conducting the LPO, maybe it was during the same tricky spot as in Paris, Maxim singing along until the violins sorted things out.
Valery Gergieg stopped the orchestra “on a pin” (showed that they were paying attention) at concert at the RFH early 2000’s, when pianist Alexsander Toradze skipped two pages in his head. Gergiev had a word with him, said a number to the orchestra and pianist and orchestra started that section again, successfully.
Now he’d just keep going and challenge the soloist to “catch up, chuvak.”
I just don’t get the fact that pianists mostly insist on playing everything by memory. Richter was eventually an obvious exception. No one in the orchestra, and no responsible conductor (Toscanini, Mitropoulos sui generis as always), does that. Gatti at the Met, “Parsifal” without a score. It’s just irresponsible showboating. Brahms 1, Beethoven 7, fine.
I think Simon Rattle conducted without a score with the CBSO but never when there was a soloist.
Most pianists would prefer the security of having the score before them during a pianist. However, thanks to Mr. Liszt who changed forever the permissibility of this, we must play from memory or not hope to have a solo career. Playing from the score is permissible only in chamber ensemble or when collaborating with a chorus. Believe you me, we would like this to be changed!
However, may I add that any concerto for any instrument carrie the expectation that the soloist will play from memory. So, this is hardly an issue limited to pianists, is it? All soloists are expected to memorize.
I think for soloists that, by the time they have learned a piece well enough to a) play it and b) interpret it to a standard they consider ready for public consumption, memorisation happens more or less automatically (I know that’s not the whole story, but it’s a big part of it).
Happily most places no longer insist on soloists working without music, as there is surely no problem with having a score there.
If you look at the schedules of big-league pianists, you’ll see that they will generally play no more than 2-3 recital programmes per year, so it’s to be expected that the music will be internalised after that many performances (and advance practice).
For conductors, and speaking from experience, I’m more doubtful because you don’t have that muscle memory to help you along. Some pieces – Brahms 1, Beethoven 7 as you say – you may not need the score come the concert, but those are pretty rare. For anything complex I’d always want the score handy just in case; this, rather than thrashing around artistically, is after all a key part of the job.
That’s quite a statement, saying that conductors who conduct from memory are irresponsible. Perhaps there are conductors who actually know the piece well enough that they don’t need the score. Which reminds me of a class of conducting students at Yale taken by my husband in the 1990s. One of them told him that the faculty conducting teacher set vast amounts of music to study every week as that would be the sort of life they would lead in future (i.e., running from concert to concert). The result, the student said, was that they would know the first page of every piece, such as Don Juan, really well, and the rest they would coast through.
I always felt that my former boss, Daniel Barenboim, was far more effective when conducting without the score. He memorized music so easily that he didn’t actually have a lot of practice conducting with the score in front of him. At least back when he conducted us two decades ago, I never thought he had quite mastered the art of turning a page and maintaining contact with the orchestra. Luckily, he could memorize reams of repertoire at a frightening rate.
Even composers, when performing their own music, play from the score.
Except perhaps, in Beecham’s case; when rehearsing Delius, the composer, in the hall, insisted that a clarinet passage was wrong…. of course, Beecham had memorose everything and a taxi was sent to his résidence for the score. Beecham (of course), was proved right: “My dear Freddie, i wish you could remember your own music as well as i do….!”
Whatever – who cares? That’s the magic of a live performance!
The orchestra sounded superb. Absolutely gorgeous playing from the principal oboe and flute and the rest of the winds, and the strings sounded fantastic.
Mistakes are certainly human, BUT it should be said, that if something like this happens to an entire section of a world class orchestra in a piece of standard repertoire, it is clearly a mistake of the rehearsal process (underrehearsed), by professional standards. Or JvZ’s beat was so unclear, that I was misunderstood.
I’m sure JvZ has learned from it regarding this very spot for the future…surprising that it happens to an experienced conductor though.
ha ha ha, to say JvZ has an unclear beat is like saying Solti has an undemonstrative beat
JvZ has one of the clearest beats in the business, if anything, the beef against JvZ is that he micro-manages with his beat, he keeps his musicians on too tight a leash
Maybe, but he can generate a tension otherwise hard to achieve. In Wagner and Bruckner such intensity creates the build-up of the form, as is obvious from his Parsifal and Ring recordings.
Mitsuko Uchida restarted the Chicago Symphony a few bars into Brandenburg CTO 5 about ten years ago. Of course, she’s not a professional conductor and was conducting from the keyboard.
The Tippett fiasco is on YouTube and interesting to hear. It is usually blamed on the leader changing the notation of the spring parts, but it’s also clear the tempo (apparently consistent with Tippett’s indications) was far too fast.
It’s interesting that this seems only to happen in first movements. Can anyone cite re-starts in subsequent movements?
In the Tippett, the spring parts are notoriously difficult, but peanuts if compared with the autumn parts.
In subsequent movements hickups regularly happen, but mostly they go unnoticed because the audiences’ attention span is exhausted after the first movement which they try to follow according to sonata structural principles.
The last time I heard the piece live was in 2012 with the BBC So under the much lamented Oliver Knussen at the Proms. The attention span of the audience wasn’t exhausted. 5000 people clapped and cheered like mad after the performance. Again, you should not project your attention span and capacities of musical appreciation and understanding on others.
It’s irritating isn’t it? At some days all our attention spans here are carefully measured, causing lost of frustration. Staff should be free to adjust their spans, and keep them flexible, according to mood and circumstances.
Sally
As in Stravinsky: “Le Tort de Printemps”
(somebody got Spring Wrong…. as is their Rite)
Fortunately, LB didn’t do this in his Berlin Mahler 9. “Oops!” Yes I know it wasn’t his/her/its/their fault.
Yes, in the mid-70s at the Ravinia Festival, James Levine conducting with Van Cliburn soloist- 90 seconds into the third movement of Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto, Clyburn played something I believe belonged in the third concerto and then to my astonishment, they stopped! After a few words, they restarted the movement and all was well.
I thought the Tippett mishap occurred because a cut was made which half the orchestra forgot to do in performance.
I wouldn’t say this happens often, but it’s not quite as rare as you think. I saw it happen with the Philadelphia Orchestra like 15 years ago. When it happened with the Cleveland Orchestra about 15 years ago too, the Orchestra was extremely angry with how local critic Donald Rosenberg reported on it in his review, and was one of several factors that led to the Plain Dealer removing him from reviewing the orchestra.
What was the story in Philadelphia?
I can’t recall the details — they got into the first few bars, stopped, and restarted. It was so such a quick restart that I barely paid attention or remember.
But one Philadelphia story that does stand out is Simon Rattle having a several minute long discussion with a few orchestra members in between the second and third movements of the Mahler 5 that ended with the orchestra retuning. It went on so long that Rattle briefly addressed the audience, saying something like “please pardon us.” I assume there was a disagreement about someone being out of tune. That was around 2004. I’ve never seen anything like it since.
Over 50 years ago at Saratoga Springs, Eugene Ormandy had to restart the third movement of the Barber Violin Concerto. This was not due to any fault of the soloist, concertmaster Norman Carol.
Frank Welser Most restarted the Bach St. John’s a few years back during the overture. He miscued the chorus and wind section, then there was cacophony for a few bars, then he restarted the Cleveland Orchestra without any further mishaps.
Saw it happen once with the Cleveland Orchestra on tour in Philadelphia. Ashkenazy conducting. Somehow the soloist and orchestra became disconnected in the third movement of the Korngold Violin Concerto. It was all cleared up in an instant, when Ashkenazy just flipped back to the beginning of the movement and everyone started over. It should be noted that this was around 1990, well before the concerto experienced a renaissance with a younger generation of performers. It’s a lot better known now!
My late father used to tell me that Kletzki stopped his orchestra after a few bars in Strauss Don Juan. I don’t remember when and which orchestra it was.
Well, that is tricky. Brain fart, maybe.
Even Toscanini had to do a restart with the NBC Symphony on the broadcast of 13 Jan ‘46 at the beginning of Mancinelli’s Fuga degli amante. Two bars in, the violins were in two different meters. It happens to the best of ‘em.
In Stockhausen’s “Gruppen” confusions among the four orchestras happen regularly, in spite of the four conductors, but since this does not make any difference with the original, nobody notices and nobody cares. It’s the result that counts.
In recordings of Boulez’ “Pli selon pli” there are often wrong notes in the figuration, but if tastefully done, it makes no difference with the score. The invention of mistake-free music has made performance of modernist works considerably easier.
3 orchestras I believe.
Sometimes they hire an extra band for effect.
More years ago than I want to think about I heard Adrian Boult have to restart the ‘Unfinished’ after only few bars. I was listening on the radio, so I can’t say why it went wrong, only that accidents can happen to the best.
It was at a Prom in the early 1960s and I was there. A couple of late-comers in the audience were noisily seeking out their seats. Sir Adrian simply waited for them to settle and then started again.
1) In my humble opinion, stopping a concert is not done enough! How many times have I wished to stop a concert midway because I thought the conductor’s interpretation was way off, and to take his baton and conduct it myself, lol
2) It’s funny that way, people make fun of “kappelmeister” conducting, “he’s just beating time”, until things go way off the rails, and then you realize how important beating time is, even for a top orchestra
Zayn, I have no idea who you are, only that your “humble opinion” in your point 1 is not humble at all but the opinion of a dilettante who thinks that an interpretation of which you disapprove should be stopped.
Great comment!
Beating time has always been the fundament of ensemble / orchestra playing. In the 18th century, a conductor often tapped with his baton on the music stand, like a metronome, to keep everybody together, or sat at the fortepiano and play with the music. Lully a century earlier stamped loudly with his long stick on the floor to keep his orchestra together, and died of it – stamping on his foot and not surviving the infection.
On 22 December 1808, with Beethoven at the keyboard, the premiere of his Choral Fantasy took place in Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, as reported by the critic for the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung: “Most striking, however, was the mistake that occurred in the final Fantasy. The wind instruments varied the theme that Beethoven had previously performed on the piano. Now it was the turn of the oboes. The clarinets – if I am not mistaken! – miscounted, and came in at the same time. A curious mixture of tones arose; Beethoven jumped up, tried to silence the clarinets: but he did not succeed until he shouted loudly and rather ill-humoredly to the entire orchestra: ‘Quiet, quiet, that won’t do! Again, again!’ and the vaunted orchestra had to deign to start the ill-fated Fantasy all over again!”
To this day, every horn still comes in too early and in the wrong key at the recapitulation in the first movement of the Eroica ; )
Every second horn.
Yes, and nobody has corrected that. Probably nobody hears it, like Beethoven.
Never heard that before in 45 years in the biz. Wonderful!!!
Love the piece, would happily listen 2-3 times in a row. Might choose a different soloist….
I have only seen conductors stop youth orchestras when things fall apart. I still say Vasily Petrenko should have stopped the orchestra at the Tchaikovsky competition in 2019 when the pianist Tianxu An came in late because he wasn’t expecting Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
Lorin Maazel restarted the Vienna Phil at one of his last concerts in the waltz mvt of Tchaikovsky´s 3rd Suite.Somehow the tricky writing over the bar lines threw them off
The measure of the conductor is not in the stopping but rather in the judgment exercised as to how to restart as well as the efficacy demonstrated in doing so.
Orchestre de Paris needs to invite Vanessa Benelli Mosell to conduct. She can get an even better performance out of this orchestra.
This reminds me of when I was a high school band director.
It was custom for the drum major to “lead” the band when they played at basketball games. No one actually followed her, they were all looking at their music while she waved her arms.
But one night she managed to confuse them and they broke down playing… the school song.
Good call by the maestro and not a big deal at all. We are all human.
Experienced a similar re-start back in the 1970s at Kennedy Center in DC. Pablo Casals was playing with an ensemble (not the National Symphony) and they got it all wrong. Full restart with an apologetic smile from all.
Pianist (I guess it was Arthur Moreira Lima) skips one page and blasts ahead. Perplexity in the orchestra, as musicians and conductor (and the public) try to grasp what’s going on.
Seconds later the first clarinet picks the lost thread and is again with the the pianist. The maestro gets his bearings, signals the orchestra and soon thy are all on the same page again. It happened in Brazil many years ago.
The clarinet man was a seasoned veteran of radio and military bands, choro and jazz groups (lots of improvised music) and symphony orchestras. He had listened to, learned and played everýthing.
Nothing wrong with stopping and starting over, but the conductor – getting the big bucks – should have the decency to turn around to the audience and take the blame.
When I was in Paris and following this orchestra very closely 15 years ago, they were ABSOLUTELY capable of this sort of mishap. I even watched them making an amateurish mess of Franck D minor once in a rehearsal, for which there could be no possible excuse.
Please keep him there.
Thoughts on this incident:
1) This happened in an orchestra I was performing with. We got about 15 bars in and part of the orchestra was a bar behind. The conductor stopped, turned to the audience and said: “Take two…” and off we went.
2) Knowing the French, the violins probably did this on purpose.
3) As some here have mentioned, I too think Jaap is an excellent conductor. He punched my ticket on the train from Amsterdam to Eindhoven many times. Always spot on.
Live performance. The glory of music. Memory means you are adrift in your practice but having to be totally available. People play differently with music in front of them. You can document it all over youtube. It’s there for all to see and hear. Mistakes happen, it’s good for audiences to start over in their minds as well. You’re creating a world. Get it right. It’s not a road trip. REH
The other common reason for a restart is, of course, someone’s mobile phone ringing….
There was a legendary performance of the Chicago Symphony, now more than half a century in the past, with the Assistant Conductor at the time, a man in way over his head who I will not identify. The old timers always stipulated that it was a runout concert, curiously in the little town of Berrien Springs, Michigan.
It had not been adequately clarified whether the orchestra would be taking the exposition repeat in the Schubert symphony (some remembered the Fifth being played, some the “Unfinished”) on the program, and the orchestra went about half-and-half at the fork in the road, creating a fascinating texture exploiting parallel fifths not at all characteristic of Schubert’s harmonic language.
The hapless conductor was overcome with panic, and shouted out, “Switch!”.
” Assistant Conductor at the time, a man in way over his head who I will not identify”
1) Ah, well, some CSO music director appointed this “way over their head” assistant conductor, so … whose fault was that?
2) “way over his head” with Schubert? Muti likes to say he can teach anyone to conduct by beating up and down to Schubert….
3) Not so hard “to identify”, if one just looked at the dates on wikipedia
There’s a relatively recent story (possibly apocryphal) about the Vienna Philharmonic disintegrating in rehearsal within a few bars of the opening of Sibelius 2: music that’s routinely played by youth orchestras around the world but which was so completely beyond their standard Austro-German frame of reference that they simply couldn’t process it.