Crashendo

[jwg]

This morning on WGBH, Kathy Fuller the host of Classics in the Morning described an experience that happened to her 20 years ago. She was to play the Mozart Piano Concerto 21 in a concert at Mechanics Hall in Worcester. She was sitting in the green room at the intermission getting ready to play and suddenly there was a loud crash. The stage hands while moving the Steinway 9 ft grand onto the front of the stage dropped it off the edge. It's legs broke off, and it landed upside down. Noone was hurt.

They found another piano but it wasn't able to be on the stage so it was going to be difficult to see the conductor. When she went to it she noticed it was a mess, the keyboard had large gaps between some of the keys among other things. And when she started to play it was quite out of tune. She managed to get through the piece and there was great applause. While telling the story there were fragments of the concert played and of course they played the crash several times.

Crashendo was the headline in one of the articles about the concert.

Comments

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

And here I'd thought it was only rock musicians of a certain sort who found the audience's reception enhanced by smashing their instruments during the performance.