VIOLIN QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS – 3

MY WORST STAGE EXPERIENCE !

QUESTION :

What was your worst stage experience ?

LAURENCE KAYALEH’S ANSWER :

About 8 years ago, I participated in a performance of Henri Dutilleux’s String Quartet « Ainsi la Nuit » (1976). The piece is very interesting but also extremely complex and difficult to put together. We worked intensively on it. This concert was the last event of a festival that was taking place in Montreal. Full house, the radio was broadcasting the concert and we were all quite nervous !

We started the first page of the piece (Nocturne), with soft and mysterious sound effects (i.e. lots of harmonics, quick changes in dynamics, pizzicati). After a few bars, I had the impression that my score was moving. I thought that this impression was a reaction to stress ! But NO, my score was indeed moving until it completely fell on the stage floor. In fact, the top of my music stand wasn’t fixed well, and everything collapsed !? While still playing (like an awkward acrobat !), I desperately tried to catch the score with my legs but it happened to be even worse…! My colleagues were looking at me, hoping for the best, but…we really had to interrupt the performance. I felt terrible, horrible, ashamed, devastated 🙁 … We started again the piece from the beginning. Luckily, we didn’t play much before the incident, as this would have been extremely disturbing and demoralizing.

Believe it or not, but the same situation happened to our violist the second time we played the quartet (around the same bar !). We had to stop AGAIN, and we all had – including the public – the best laughter ever. All this seemed unreal !…

After a good deep breath, we played Dutilleux’s Ainsi la Nuit (the complete version this time !), and it certainly was our best performance of it :).

NOTE : The music stands were all quite unstable in this hall, and we had already experienced some problems during rehearsals ! Voilà, I’m still laughing while writing the story !!! Watch out your music stands or…perform from memory 🙂

Laurence