Is there a piano player in the house? How listeners – and fellow musicians – loved the show | Classical music

Muic’s equivalent of chasing a ball at a baseball game happened on saturday in sydney, when a 21-year-old university student jumped maintain performance of the movie La La Land and the musicians. The band’s keyboard player was ill and was unable to participate in the second session. Unable to find a replacement on such short notice, director Justin Hurwitz (winner of two Oscars for the film’s music) asked the audience if there was a singer in the house. Sterling NASA answered the call, singing in the second half, and managing it himself, without changing the tempo or wrong signature.

It’s a great story – and amazing that a member of the audience had the reading skills and talent to keep up. Can it be done in a high-class concert? There have also been times when the audience saved the day. The best of these stories comes from the summer of 1974, when the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus brought Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana to the Proms, led by André Previn, with Thomas Allen singing among the musicians. You can feel the wonderful moment from the broadcast of Allen’s collapse in the cello room in the BBC World Service’s Witness History. He was unconscious and they carried him off the stage. After a brief pause, Previn decided to continue rather than cancel the project.

Enter recent music graduate Patrick McCarthy, who was at the Royal Albert Hall watching the concert and following it up with the results. He sang the part as a student, and stepped back to present his works. In a quick decision by the BBC, they said yes (Allen’s student, one of the LSO Chorus, became the doctor who was supervising the singer). McCarthy was given a fast-tracked jacket, took the stage, and gave the performance of her life. None of the Radio 3 listeners were told – although his mother, listening at home, recognized his voice immediately.

By the time of the television broadcast a few days later, the bravery of McCarthy’s music was national news. These days, they can be very interesting on social media. Back then, he had 15 minutes of fame – it was a “dream experience”, he said – but the Prom gave him the confidence that singing would be his life, which he has been doing ever since, singing baritone and tenor, and conducting choirs and orchestras.

Moments like this happen when old and great concerts are at risk, and the wall between us in the audience and the musicians on stage is breaking down. NASA and McCarthy saving the day may make headlines, but the irony is that stories like this don’t happen very often.

It’s only when things go wrong that we’re reminded of the great human transcendence it takes to start playing any kind of music: when a string breaks (e.g. Ray Chen‘s while playing Korngold’s Violin Concerto); An oboe reed is plucked (this is for the LSO Olivier Stankiewicz on solo Berlioz; or more interestingly, when a soloist starts playing a different song than the one the orchestra starts playing. That’s what happened to pianist Maria João Pires with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and conductor Riccardo Chailly: what happened – he planned the wrong concert – turned into a miracle when he sang Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 20 in D from the heart.

So the next time you are in a hall with live musicians singing for you, remember that every moment of peace they give us comes from a constant battle with risk: the sure knowledge that things can go wrong at any moment; that everything is at stake in the performance of wire music. Don’t take it for granted. It’s our strength in the audience that keeps us going – and if not, start practicing baritone or piano solo now. You never know when your big break may come – just ask Patrick McCarthy and Sterling NASA.

THe was the world premiere of John Tavener’s Krishna at Grange Park it will eventually allow listeners to hear what the composer called “the most exciting song I’ve ever written”. He finished this “mystic pantomime” in 2005, eight years ago his deathbut it had to wait until now for its first production, directed by Sir David Pountney with choreography by Shobana Jeyasingh. Krishna is among Tavener’s many pieces that attempt to blend traditional spirituality, narrative and meditation, from Beautiful Names up to eight hours Temple Veil. The success of Tavener’s work was ambitious for some; for others, not really knowing.

But there is more to Tavener’s music than meditation and serenity. Listen to Death of Ivan Ilyichcomposed by composer Steven Isserlis. The piece, written after Tavener’s recovery from a heart attack, is dedicated to Isserlis’ wife Pauline, who died in 2010. (Isserlis writes “John struggled with great pain in his final years – he described it (often) as ‘joy’.”) Setting Tolstoy’s story about a judge suffering from an incurable disease, Tavener’s music is unflinchingly honest in the soundscapes he creates: the eloquent singing and the sound of the solo. to scream; copper and pulse to announce the painful area and beyond; and pools of stillness like music that become less intense as the song progresses. It ends unevenly, with a final scene of quiet light as the cellist finds the highest note in his register it feels unearthly, unreal.

This week Tom has been listening to: Katia and Marielle Labeque are 55 years old: an anthology (this coming Friday) of music that captures the pianist’s enduring interest, with music by Fanny Mendelssohn, Margaret Bonds and Marie Jaëll for the first time in their 55-year career, alongside pieces inspired and commissioned by David Chalmin, Bryce Dessner and Philips’s Glass Final movement Mother Goose Suite too.