Concerts

For some artists, 'nerves' are their severest difficulty. Their mental agony before and during a concert is matched only by that of their friends who feel honour-bound to turn up. For an excellent artist to know what he can do, only to find it impossible to achieve it when it matters, must in the long run be unbearable. Technical preparation, however thorough, is of no use. In some instances psychiatric treatment may help; but there are 'incurable' cases where the sufferer eventually has to accept his limitations and concentrate on teaching, frequently to the advantage of his pupils.
There are, of course, innumerable causes for a performance to go wrong, or for an artist to fear that it might. But first of all, let us exclude insufficient technique: if an artist has not mastered a work completely, or it is altogether beyond him, he should not attempt to perform it. But assuming adequate technical means, his path is still strewn with banana skins: an incompetent accompanist; misunderstandings with the conductor; something wrong with the instrument; a tummy upset; bad acoustics; a badly heated hall; a cold (or colds, in the audience) — the list is endless. And leaving all this aside, might there lurk somewhere, possibly in the subconscious, one fear, overshadowing all others?
I would like to put forward, in all modesty, a theory which I know will be regarded by many professional musicians as entirely misconceived, not to say ridiculous: could it possibly be that one of the most important reasons for stage fright is the fear of a memory lapse? Or, to put it another way, do audiences and professional musicians lay too much stress on works being played by heart?
Over the years I have heard diametrically opposed views from the experts.
'Playing from memory is essential, lest the printed page interferes with the contact between arm and brain, thereby destroying concentration.’
'Modern works should always be played from the score, because learning them by heart is probably not worth the effort considering how infrequently they are performed. If artists were to adopt this suggestion, it would be to the advantage of contemporary composers — their works would be heard more often’.
'If your memory temporarily fails, your fingers automatically take over’
'The public don't mind whether or not a performer plays from the score’
'Audiences expect us to know a work by heart, or else they will suspect that we haven't prepared ourselves properly’
'Not having to worry about my memory means that I can concentrate more on artistic expression’
'Playing from the score actually inhibits artistic expression’
And so on, ad infinitum.
Every one of these opinions is supported by reasoned argument. There can be no unanimity.
To look at the question in simple practical terms, performing solo works without the music seems (today) ~ with notable exceptions — to be the rule, even for those performers who would prefer the opposite.* Most artists conform to apparent audience preferences. But are these really so clear-cut? Admittedly, I once heard an old lady remark to her companion about a violinist who had just finished a more than pedestrian rendering of a Beethoven Romance: 'He is a great artist: he plays everything by heart'. But this, one may hope, is rare. What a musical audience wants to hear is the best possible performance of a work. Knowing it by heart is not an essential ingredient as it is in opera or the theatre where it is indispensable. And there, of course, performers can fall back on the equivalent of the score ~ the prompter.
Although in chamber music other factors play a part, it is nonetheless noteworthy that ensembles, even duos, almost invariably perform with the music before them. Those few who make a point of dispensing with it are to my knowledge not regarded as artistically superior. Indeed, I have heard it said that they are liable to suffer from a somewhat limited repertoire. Moreover, I should not be surprised if these feats were to absorb nervous energy that could be used to better advantage elsewhere.
I remember a charity concert I had arranged at which the Amadeus Quartet turned up without the cello part of the 'Hunt' Quartet.** The chances are that every member of the Amadeus could have performed this work in his sleep. But starting before the missing part had been procured? Out of the question!
I should add that since the players were quite upset by this unexpected mishap, I tried to cheer them up with the (true) story of my father arriving at the hall to play in a Furtwangler concert only to discover that he had left at home a removable bridge with which his dentist had recently supplied him and which he had not yet got used to. My mother had to make a mad dash through Berlin in a taxi, arriving back with it five minutes before he was due on the platform. My story fell fiat. The Amadeus maintained that this was a purely cosmetic problem and that a violinist, in any case, had to keep his mouth clamped shut on the stage, except for smilingly acknowledging applause.
So why do so many people deny the single performer the fail-safe so readily granted to an ensemble? If only because 'it has always been done this way\ one should remember that violin soloists invariably perform standing up - or did, until the emergence of Itzhak Perlman. His remark that many colleagues secretly envy him for being allowed to sit down, whilst jocular, probably contains more than a grain of truth.
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 * The Flesch pupil Roman Totenberg considered the question sufficiently important to write to his teacher in 1935: 'I am playing the Brahms sonata from memory', Concerts 25

** The incident gave a popular daily, which would otherwise not have dreamt of reviewing the event, the inevitable opportunity for the headline 'Hunt for the Hunt Quartet'.