So you made a mistake on the gig yesterday. I feel your pain. We all make mistakes- I made a real howler twice in the same place on a cello gig recently and it\u2019s been bothering me ever since.<\/p>\n
Mistakes are a controversial and painful subject for musicians. Nobody likes making them, and nobody likes hearing them (except, occasionally in a nasty, Schadenfreude-ish way). Some people think avoiding mistakes is the most important thing a musician can do- this attitude is far too common at orchestral auditions and competitions. It creates a musical climate where caution is king. Blech! On the other hand, it\u2019s awfully easy to become too blas\u00e9 about accuracy and concentration. I knew an interesting orchestral entrepreneur who set up a recording orchestra where the musicians were encouraged to take big musical risks, and were forgiven if those risks led to mistakes because they weren\u2019t playing safe. Over time, however, some in the orchestra used that mindset to justify a lack of preparation or focus. It became an orchestra more sloppy than brave. Mistakes can seriously get in the way of the music.<\/p>\n
The fact is, everyone makes mistakes- even the greats. This means we’ve all got a stake in knowing how to manage our mistakes. For soloists, the stakes are incredibly high- if you want to build a solo career, you’ve got to be asked back.\u00a0Some time ago,\u00a0this subject came up after a concert I did when a fine soloist made a really obvious error in the concert. One of the musicians asked me after the concert if the poor chap had been \u201cvoted off the island.\u201d Definitely not- I’ve already re-engaged them. Meanwhile, at another orchestra, a soloist from 2 years ago got in touch recently asking about a return visit. That one isn’t going to happen, even though their mistake was far less obvious (and not at all decisive in my decision). Their performance didn’t offer much musical inspiration and they didn’t seem to be enjoying working with us at the time.<\/p>\n
So, what can you do as an orchestral player or soloist to minimize the negative impact of the mistakes you\u2019re bound to make sooner or later? Here are a few things you can do that will always increase your chances of living to fight another day when things don\u2019t go to plan.<\/p>\n
9. You have a kick-ass sound.\u00a0<\/strong>Nobody made more mistakes than Horowitz. But nobody had a sound like Horowitz. Even his worst mistakes sound better than most people’s best playing. A really special, captivating, enthralling sound is incredibly rare (and getting rarer all the time). Develop one, and people will cut you a lot more slack because they want to hear you do your thang for the sheer pleasure of it.<\/p>\n \u00a08.\u00a0<\/strong>You know when to accompany the orchestra. <\/strong>Dorothy Delay used to say this all the time to her violin students at Aspen. Of course, we all want to follow you, but there are times when we can\u2019t. For instance, there are notorious places in the Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos where it\u2019s all but impossible for anyone in the orchestra, or the conductor to hear you. The repertoire is littered with passages where your material is doubled by the woodwind- you can hear them, but, much as they want to, they probably can\u2019t hear you. Sometimes, you can avoid a big mistake by knowing when to look like a soloist but play like an accompanist.<\/span><\/p>\n 7. You practice slowly, softly and calmly, and are comfortable playing at all tempi. <\/strong>This is important for orchestral players, as any practice you do on a concert day is likely to be overheard by either your colleagues or the conductor. Whether it\u2019s the 1<\/span>st<\/sup> violin part in the Schumann 2 Scherzo, the trumpet solo in Mahler 5 or even the first page of Don Juan (whoever you may be), sitting on stage hacking away fast and loud sends out not only signals of social cluelessness, but warning signs of near-certain ensemble and tuning problems. If someone is warming up on the Schumann at blazing speed, or practicing the last mvt of Tchaik 4 totally \u201cballs to the wall,\u201d experience teaches that they\u2019re almost certain to rush like crazy or miss things when we do it with the orchestra. Flexibility (both physical and philosophical), fluidity and clarity are things we want to work at every day. If you\u2019re counting on talent, adrenaline and mojo to carry the day under pressure, things are bound to go wrong from time to time- you may not see it coming, but we have. Likewise for soloists- if you practice everything only at your ideal tempo, you\u2019re likely to start missing things when you find the orchestra is dragging or rushing (as they always do) in the gig.<\/span><\/p>\n 6. You got there early<\/strong>. I know, this sounds painfully obvious, but experience tells me it\u2019s not. Once upon a time, I did two sarrusophone (not the actual instrument) concerti in consecutive weeks with different orchestras and different soloists. I\u2019d worked with both soloists before, but both were late to their rehearsal. Although both were fine sarrusophonists, I\u2019ve never worked with either again because the previous time I\u2019d worked with them, they\u2019d only just gotten to rehearsal in time. If you\u2019re an hour early in year one and ten minutes late in year two, your colleagues might forgive your travel difficulties, and even accept that your sarrusophone was having a bad reed day. If you walked in five minutes before the downbeat last year and were ten minutes late in year two, your goose is pretty well cooked even before you squeaked that high note. One finds it hard to separate the temporal brinksmanship from the musical mistake. The musician who cuts their travel time too fine too often is often the one who doesn\u2019t allow quite the practice time a piece requires, too. Maybe somedays they hit everything, and other days they don’t. This goes triple for orchestral musicians, too. In Britain, we all understand that there are days when the transit system collapses. Sooner or later, you\u2019re going to be late- people will be understanding if you\u2019ve built a track record for being reliable. Best to make sure the rest of the time, you get to the gig plenty early.<\/span><\/p>\n 5.You allow ample mental space on concert days.<\/strong> Being a soloist is a funny thing. One day you\u2019re longing, seemingly for years, for that big chance to play your concerto or sing your aria. Then, almost without warning, it\u2019s your whole life and you\u2019re doing it all the time. A smart soloist remembers that, even if you\u2019re playing your 400<\/span>th<\/sup> Mozart Clarinet Concerto, playing a concerto (or playing an orchestral concert, for that matter) is not something you can do well if your mind is elsewhere, or if you\u2019re frazzled or fatigued. I\u2019ve seen many a soloist come to grief when they tried to squeeze too much travel, housework or schmoozing into a concert day. I once had a cello soloist confess (almost brag) to me that he\u2019d spent the morning of our concert building kitchen cabinets. It soon became clear his hands and head were worn out before the rehearsal even started. The concert was a travesty. Smart soloists don\u2019t try to do too much on a concert day, and the same goes for smart orchestral players. If you’ve got a nervy solo like the first horn part in Beethoven 7, the cello solo in William Tell or the concertmaster solo in Shostakovich 5, people will be hard pressed to let you off the hook for a mishap if it\u2019s clear you’ve been trying to squeeze ten other things into the same day. Musicians who simplify their concert days play with more focus, more engagement and more imagination- even their mistakes sound better.<\/span><\/p>\n 4. You respond to what you hear.<\/strong> So many concerti live or die not just on the performance of the soloist, but on the contribution of the soloists in the orchestra. Think of the duo between horn and cello in the Shostakovich First Cello Concerto, the violin and solo cello duet in the Dvorak Cello Concerto or the contribution of the solo oboe to the Brahms Violin Concerto. The contributions your colleagues in the orchestra can make to your<\/strong><\/em> performance are enormous. If you can\u2019t respond to and incorporate their ideas into your performance, they\u2019re not likely to forget you came in just a little sharp after their solo. <\/span>Play chamber music with the orchestra<\/em><\/strong>, and they\u2019ll support you from the upbeat to the double bar every time. And\u2026 they\u2019ll lift your performance to a different level. (The same goes for the members of an orchestra, too).<\/span><\/p>\n 3. You trust your playing (or singing) to put your interpretation across. <\/strong>Are you a talker? A fusser? A debater? An interrupter? That’s fine, but….Maybe you don\u2019t have to be? You might be amazed at how little some of the best<\/strong><\/em> soloists talk. Is this because they don\u2019t care that the oboes are behind or that the cellos aren\u2019t phrasing with them? No- it\u2019s because they have the confidence that they can put their ideas across musically with such clarity and conviction that the cellos intuitively know how to phrase, and the oboes know when and how to breathe. For me as a conductor, talking is an admission of failure. It means I\u2019ve tried to show something in a couple of different ways and it hasn\u2019t worked. Either I\u2019ve been unclear, or failed to get the musicians\u2019 attention, or they\u2019re just not on top of their parts technically and we have to practice on company time. Talking is a sign that something isn\u2019t working as it should. The same thing goes for a soloist. Talk if you need to (please don\u2019t sit in sulky silence because you think the conductor doesn’t approve of talking), but <\/span>aspire not to need to talk<\/em><\/strong>. Someone like John Lill can get through a whole Brahms Piano Concerto without having to say anything but \u201cyou all sound marvellous\u201d because their musical intent is crystal clear to the listeners on stage and off. When you have to tell us \u201cI\u2019m going to take time here\u201d it can come\u00a0across as if you were saying: \u201cI\u2019m warning you I\u2019m going to take time here because when you hear me play it, it won\u2019t be obvious to you that I\u2019m planning to take time, or why I want to take time, until I suddenly slow down, so just write something in your music along the lines of \u201cguess how much slower to play here\u201d and be prepared for me to glare at you over the sarrusophone when we\u2019re not together.”<\/span><\/p>\n 2. You know the score!<\/strong> A mistake that\u2019s caused because your part is the only one you\u2019ve learned is hard to forgive. Playing or singing a solo part is only half of the soloist\u2019s job. You must know the score- well. We’ve all seen what happens when an opera singer doesn’t know what is supposed to happen between one entrance and the next. Disaster ensues. Crack a high note? Fine. Come in early because you don\u2019t know what the music you don\u2019t sing sounds like? Not fine. This is so important in an orchestral audition- it\u2019s so easy to tell if someone knows how the excerpt they\u2019re playing fits in with the rest of the orchestra. If that knowledge isn’t there, we’ve got nothing to assess you on but accuracy. Know the score and your mistakes will at least make musical sense.<\/span><\/p>\n 1. You can communicate an interesting musical point of view.<\/strong> Believe it or not, having an interesting musical point of view is, in my experience, the rarest quality in musicians, and also the most important. Anyone can be derivative, literal, formulaic or wayward. If your take on the Beethoven Violin Concerto sounds just like Mutter\u2019s or Perlman\u2019s but with more mistakes, then the mistakes really count. If you\u2019re doing lots of attention-seeking \u201cmusical\u201d stunts, any mistakes will also attract maximum attention. There\u2019s no shortcut to an interesting, personal and engaging interpretation- you\u2019ve got to ask a lot of questions, live with the music, study the score away from your instrument, put your repertoire in context, challenge your ideas (and especially your teacher\u2019s ideas), feed off your colleagues and be in the moment. Once you develop a really interesting point of view, you have to find the technical means to put it across to the listener. If you can play the Bruch Violin Concerto or the Beethoven 4<\/span>th<\/sup> Piano Concerto in a way that makes your colleagues and the audience listen with excitement and anticipation, you can probably be forgiven missing the odd run. Why only nine things on the list? Because this one counts double. Have something interesting to say about the music and you’ll always give yourself the best chance at a second chance when you need it. Cause let’s face it: we all need a second chance sooner or later.<\/span><\/p>\n ____________________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n More from Vftp:<\/p>\n Some bonus tips for soloists<\/a><\/p>\n