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Not sure if there was a thread like this before, but here goes. One of my piano professors told me of a huge memory lapse by Emile Giles, he was playing Schumann concerto, it was live on radio and somewhere during the third movement (what's up with this movement!!!) it sounds like a child banging on the piano, eventually he finds his way and it goes back to normal. He had memory lapse.

So yeah, any other famous memory lapses...

As a young teen playing Mozart's Fantasy in D minor I forgot much of the last page. Does that qualify?

Can't remember the pianist, but he had to stop during a concerto performance. He approached the conductor and said "Where are we?" and the conductor said "Carnegie Hall".

I have heard two professional pianists have memory slips, both in the third movement of . . . the Schumann Piano Concerto. Since both are still alive and concertizing I am not going to mention names. I also was at a concert where a very famous violinist completely blew an entrance during the last movement of the Korngold Violin Concerto. She came in early with a FF quadruple stop, immediately realized her mistake, smiled at the conductor, put her violin back down and waited for the correct entrance. BTW, she played absolutely beautifully.

Not to shamelessly self-promote, but pretty much everything here:

http://brendankinsella.com/httpdocs/hall_of_shame.html

That Chopin sonata 3 has got to be a joke. Not trying to offend, but those lapses were pure comedy.

Totally predictable, as the last pages of this piece are lost, and NOBODY remembers them.

Several come to mind for me:

Norman Krieger played Beethoven's Emperor. He was using the score throughout(well had it up on the piano, didn't notice until he turned a page late in the 2nd movement and parts of the last). During the last movement, there was a part where his left hand dropped out entirely. The orchestra also didn't play much here. It was very noticeable.

Stephen Hough was premiering a new work for orchestra and choir in Indianapolis. For the second half of the program he played Mendelssohn's G minor piano concerto. The concerto was flawless, but he played an encore after, a small piece by Schumann, and there were some memory slips. Though I think that was more from being tired then memory.

Didn't Schnabel have a notorious lapse in the Brahms Bb with Bruno Walter conducting?

There was a certain awesomeness to it too, though, along the lines of Herbert Lom’s epic transformations in the Pink Panther movies… as rationality and order attempt to hold out, but eventually give way to the inexorable onset of madness and chaos… *ahem* I got a little teary eyed myself

Wow, I think I can do that too :p

What is happening there with Brahms? Does he just skip to the next session after two tries?
http://www.brendankinsella.com/Brahms1.mp3

I think Richter's memory slip during a solo recital has to be among one of the most famous. He always used the score for every performance after that.

I heard 3 recitals of the last 3 Beethoven sonatas in which each pianist had a memory slip in the fugue of Op. 110. Rudolph Serkin at Carnegie Hall, Claudio Arrau at the 97th St. Y, and another renowned pianist at the 97th St. Y, who is still alive and so I won't mention his name. All 3 recovered quickly, and each recital was absolutely memorable despite the slips.

(memory lapse there)


Yeah -- I didn't know who the conductor was, but that must be it. As I read it, the music came to a stop, Schnabel and the conductor went and huddled together silently (or quietly), then Schnabel went back to the piano and they picked back up.


Thanks for highlighting that one. You made me have to go and check it out.

Brendan, I gotta tell you, that was brilliant. Even though I know the piece very well, I have to admit I wouldn't have been sure it was a lapse -- I would have wondered (a little) if maybe this was some alternate version you had found. At least on a single hearing, it WORKS.

I've only had one real memory lapse in performing, and it was on the slow movement of this sonata, in the passage before the final return of the main theme. After one of those little single-voice figures in the R.H., when I brought my hands back downward for the next chords, one hand or the other just landed in the wrong place and so the chord was mush, such mush that I was stunned out of consciousness about exactly what was supposed to be going on. I just 'kept playing,' not caring much except to stay in rhythm and to be playing stuff that was more-or-less from the movement, and knowing that I had to wind up on an F#-7th chord to lead into the last section. I decided I'd just try to keep it going until I saw a way to lead to a fermata on that chord and meanwhile to keep playing some semblance of a melody. Few people knew anything had been terribly amiss. A friend of mine knew and said "I didn't know Chopin wrote jazz."

BTW I found that development section in the 1st movement to be the hardest memory challenge of the sonata and gave it lots of attention. So, then it's the slow movement where I screw up....

A few seasons back I was at a recital where the pianist went WAY off the rails a few measures into the coda of Chopin's 4th Ballade. He kept going, admirably making things up in a desperate stab at getting to the finish. He did finally regroup for the last 12-13 measures, but it was really scary for a while. I felt so bad for him... Being thirty-ish, he didn't even have the "I'm getting old" excuse.

But it is a funny thing about going off the rails - I've seen people get lost even with the score in front of them, so it seems that some aren't really about memory per se, but about some kind of other short-circuiting because of nerves.

Here's a memory lapse story for you. It's not famous, but it happened to me yesterday.

I played the first movement of the Appassionata for my teacher's end-of-school-year studio class. No memory problems until I get to the Adagio in the coda, just before the big C7 -> F chords that launch the Piu Allegro section on the last page. I draw the adagio out as usual, pause before the chords... and I suddenly cannot remember what the right chord is. I know it's a C7, but I'm not sure which inversion in the RH. I sit there for what feels like 5 minutes (but was probably only 3 seconds) before beginning to feel that the drawn-out pause was getting worse than a wrong chord would be. So I just go for it... and thank god, my hands knew the right inversion.

Not only did no one know I had just had a moment of utter terror, but I think the extra pause actually worked. At any rate, I was able to take my frustration out on the Piu Allegro.

-J

Must have sounded like 'rubato.'

Supposedly that was Kreisler being accompanied by Rachmaninoff.

LOL!! No wonder I couldn't find it the other day!

I blame it on the subject matter of this thread. . .

Speaking of this, I really think that Chopin's chromaticism lead him to write the first hints of jazz. The little left-hand 'improvisations' in the 4th scherzo during the repeats are so jazzy.

Now, I know -- this is NOT jazz. But they're 'jazzy'.