I’m glad that the conductors I’ve worked with don’t blog! This one does.
I’d be so nervous working with that guy, not knowing if he was going to point out any of my little bloopers.
Not that I make them, mind you.
Funny little story though (and I knew someone who did the same thing during a little chamber music party — I blundered on something so when he repeated the line he gracefully blundered as well):
Then there’s the famous English Horn solo in act II. Our EH player, who has been very reliable, had a slight bobble and added an extra descending note to the passage. Not to be outdone our Principal Flute, who has the same passage a few bars later, promptly added said extra note to his solo. There were a couple of shaky moments when I thought we all were going to fall over giggling.
I don’t know Mr. Eddins but I did “work” with his co-blogger, Mr. Spigelman back home in Texas. He conducted the Ft. Worth Youth Chamber Orchestra when I was in high school and was a major reason why I decided to try out the whole music career. He’s obviously a very nice guy because he has never written about that clarinetist who gave him *a ton* of bloopers as fodder.
What a sweet story you both relate, though! Musicians can be collegial every once in a while. 😉
I do remember my blooper and the “copy” of it with fondness. I was a young’un … and in awe of all these older people (who I am sure were younger than I am now!) …
We CAN be nice and kind of fun when we try, eh? 😉
The best instance I ever heard of this was on Performance Today. It looks somewhat retold here:
“The misshapen Schumann Piano Concerto started its life as a stand-alone Fantasy that morphed into a long first movement, the composer then adding two small closing sections to flesh it out. The work has an unusually quirky performance history. In one of the first concert hall performances of the work, the solo oboist made a glaring mistake in the statement of its opening theme. The pianist, none other than Johannes Brahms, duplicated the error in his repetition of the melody so as not to embarrass the man.”
-From http://www.nysun.com/arts/avery-fisher-doubleheader/70305/
Yeah, I blogged about that a while back (January 2008, to be more specific). Too funny!