Live data from Hacker News

Anxiety nightmare comes true for pianist at competition

inquirer.com

21–30 of 65 posts

Re: Anxiety nightmare comes true for pianist at competition

#21
I was on the drill team in ROTC and in the middle of one of our maneuvers where we needed to make some adjustments to the rifle strap, my buddy’s just completely fell to the ground in about 3-4 pieces. It made a huge clatter. He stood there stone faced and unmoving, at attention while the rest of the platoon finished the maneuver. The judges, three intense USMC gunnery sergeants, just stared at my friend.

When the rest of the team was done, our commander calmly said “MIDN X, fix yourself.” He bent down precisely, threaded the strap and snapped back to attention.

Then we moved forward with the drill card. We got first place among 150+ teams.

It’s what happens amidst the unexpected that defines success.

Re: Anxiety nightmare comes true for pianist at competition

#22
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - the title of "Anxiety nightmare" also isn't accurate based on the actual story they outline. I know that clickbait sells and all, but even "Wrong song played for pianist..." would be better and mostly accurate.

Without reading the article you would assume this is about a pianist that forgot their pants and only realized about it when in front of the audience.

I thought it would be about walking out on stage and realising he wasn't wearing any trousers

Re: Anxiety nightmare comes true for pianist at competition

#23
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m amused that she still looks like she’s feeling despair even while she is seemingly crushing it. Perhaps I’m missing some nuance though.

It's a long piece, so she's probably afraid she'll forget a passage later on.

It's super impressive that people can play music like that form memory, I mean there's got to be thousands or tens of thousands of notes in there.

Re: Anxiety nightmare comes true for pianist at competition

#24

When I was in junior high, I found out an hour before my percussion auditon that I'd been told to prepare the wrong piece. It ended up being fine (they agreed to judge me on the piece I had prepared, and I even won a seat), but for an eleven-year-old at his first major auditon, it did seem like quite an anxiety nightmare.

When in high school I was part of a 3-student team to compete in local economy olympics. The competition was public and 3-person teams represented respective school in a public venue.

Only a day before the competition we were told a mistake was made and it actually was "ecology" competinion and not about economy at all.

We still beat most schools in the region and finished third, including beating a school that had a class specialized in ecology.

Re: Anxiety nightmare comes true for pianist at competition

#26
post #4

The classical example of expecting another piece is when Maria Joao Pires performed in Amsterdam and only during the orchestra introduction figured out her mistake. See her reaction on Youtube [1]. As opposed to the article above, she hadn't performed this piece in over a year. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS64pb0XnbI

Wow!! Thank you so much for sharing this; I hadn’t seen it before. Do you happen to know if there is video of the entire performance?

Re: Anxiety nightmare comes true for pianist at competition

#27
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is intense, and I don't listen to classical music regularly.

Classical music is supposed to be intense, albeit not necessarily in the "techno" sort of way. You really ought to play it fairly loudly (obviously not to the ear-damaging levels), and the recording needs to have a lot of dynamic range on it to capture it correctly. Classical music played and recorded correctly will use some intensity cues rarely used by modern music like dynamic range. Where I think it tends to fall…

Why doesn't baroque seem as repetitive? To me, it seems closer to the modern music format than classical is, despite it being older than classical.

Re: Anxiety nightmare comes true for pianist at competition

#28
post #2

The article initially makes it sound like the pianist was caught completely off-guard when the band started playing a different song to what he had rehearsed. If you read further, however, you discover that the pianist had actually prepared to play both songs, but that their order had been switched, which is a significantly less dramatic story.

And it seems the piece was announced (first incorrectly, then correctly – or the other way round depending on the view) while the pianist and conductor were waiting backstage. So the pianist was aware of the different piece even before he stepped on stage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOUSFNgEy7c Still an unpleasant situation, but not THAT bad.

The announcement was in Russian, but the pianist is Chinese. He would have caught the name of the pieces but he probably didn't understand the announcer saying he mixed them up.

Re: Anxiety nightmare comes true for pianist at competition

#29
post #4

The classical example of expecting another piece is when Maria Joao Pires performed in Amsterdam and only during the orchestra introduction figured out her mistake. See her reaction on Youtube [1]. As opposed to the article above, she hadn't performed this piece in over a year. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS64pb0XnbI

Thanks for that. It made my day.

Re: Anxiety nightmare comes true for pianist at competition

#30
post #4

The classical example of expecting another piece is when Maria Joao Pires performed in Amsterdam and only during the orchestra introduction figured out her mistake. See her reaction on Youtube [1]. As opposed to the article above, she hadn't performed this piece in over a year. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS64pb0XnbI

I’m amused that she still looks like she’s feeling despair even while she is seemingly crushing it. Perhaps I’m missing some nuance though.

She does worse than she knows she can.
Post reply on HN