That famous old actors’ mantra – never work with children or
animals – is founded on simple expediency; both groups will inevitably upstage
the professional actor either by their refusal to abide by the conventions of
stage etiquette or by their inherent “cute” factor. Is it, though, equally relevant to
musicians? The subject came up during an
informal gathering with concert promoters the other day.
For much of my early career as a cathedral organist,
children were my main professional performing force. I invariably found the boys in a cathedral
choir vastly more professional and capable than the men, many of whom were, in
their own way, frightful prima donnas. And
as a critic attending several opera performances (notably Aïda) where animals were present, the odd involuntary defecation on
stage apart, I never saw any of them behave with anything other than immaculate
professionalism; but I never had to work alongside them, so I can’t comment on
the problems they created backstage.
However, one of our assembled group told a lovely story
about a performance of Carnival of the
Animals in which children and animals were combined with catastrophic
results. He had brought in two child
star pianists and had filmed the relevant animals which he then projected on to
a screen above the pianists.
Unfortunately, having decided to film them all himself (to cut costs) he
had not perhaps exercised the same care as a professional film director and as
the lavish aquarium of his son’s school was projected in glorious colour on the
screen, it was obvious that lying on the bottom of the colourful fish tank was
a rubber object, not unconnected with birth control, which some young joker
had, at some point, tossed into the aquarium where it lay unnoticed by fish and
teachers. But not by the two pianist children
who noticed it and collapsed into such paroxysms of laughter that the
performance ground to a halt. “Work with
children and animals? Never again!” was his advice.
However, that was a minority opinion. Most agreed that children and animals were
easy to deal with in comparison with singers and concert pianists.
From my limited experience, I have no doubt that singers
are, almost without exception, an absolute headache with their unrealistic
demands and their weird neuroses. A good
friend once told me about a concert he put on in a church where the singer, on
arrival, demanded that there should be no cucumber in the refreshments. Having previously ascertained that the singer
had no unusual dietary (or other) requests, my friend had, in all good faith,
asked the ladies of the church to prepare sandwiches which had, of course,
contained cucumber. He spent the whole
of the concert carefully removing the offending fruit (and it is a fruit,
rather than a vegetable) from the sandwiches, not having the heart to ask the
loyal ladies of the church to remake the whole batch.
Then there was the great singer visiting Malaysia whose
demands included the air-conditioning of the concert hall being turned off for
the entire duration of her visit. She
came from a notoriously cold country and presumably regarded air-conditioning
as an irrelevant luxury; as the hall became hotter and clammier, the
instruments became increasingly out of tune as the violinists’ sweaty fingers
slid loosely over their fingerboards and as the singer herself began to
perspire copiously, one would have thought she would have learnt her lesson,
but her parting shot was that the hall’s ventilation was bad and she would
never come again. And there are
countless similar stories where singers have forced on poor concert promoters
unrealistic demands fuelled by an unrealistic belief in their own elevated position
in the pecking order of humanity. I heard of a singer demanding only Israeli
oranges while touring an Arab country, one insisting on the national flag in a
concert hall being taken down as it clashed with the colour of her dress and
another demanding that the front three rows of the auditorium be left empty
(the concert had already sold out) as she did not want people to see her from
too close quarters.
But concert pianists?
My experience of them is that they are usually pretty odd, but only a
handful create real problems. Not so, it
seems. Every wrong note in rehearsal,
every miscounted rest, is never the fault of the pianist, but entirely down to
inefficiency on behalf of the concert promoter.
One pianist, apparently, insisted that the organisers had switched
pianos in the hour which had elapsed between the rehearsal and the concert, and
as the discarded pianos had not been tuned, there was an inordinate delay while
the tuner was called to service the replacement piano while the increasingly
irate audience waited. Another, it
seemed, objected to the brand of water being offered in his changing room and,
despite his preferred brand not being available in the country where he was
playing, insisted some was brought in especially for his second concert the
following week. The organiser wryly
observed that, when he left, “he had not even touched the stuff”.
And it doesn’t stop there.
For some reason, concert pianists attract a large and often unruly camp
following. A trombone soloist will turn
up with his trombone and, perhaps, his motorbike; a pianist turns up, not with
his instrument, but with a gaggle of assistants, supporters and friends all of
whom are expedited to be accommodated and nourished at the concert promoter’s
expense, and all of whom will insist on travel only in luxury limousines and in
the first class cabin of aeroplanes. And
some even have their parents tagging along, making the demands for their
children which one suspects the pianists themselves would never make. “I don’t mind xxx”, said one of our group, “it’s
his mother that causes the problem and I’ll not have him again simply because
of her”.
Give me children and animals every time.
Didn't you once relate to me about some superstar pianist who objected to the brand of perfume worn by the female staff of the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas, and asked for the offending scent and wearer to be removed from the hall?
ReplyDeleteImagine if organists were to be picky of their instrument.Ha ha ha.No way any organist could go around the world and play. In fact I think its fun for organists to expect the unexpected at the console.
ReplyDelete