'Great' recording blunders

[Albion]

You occasionally come across a glaring error in a supposedly 'great' recording. One which I have always treasured occurs during the March (No.1) in the Prologue to Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty in the acclaimed Concertbegouw/ Dorati recording (Philips, 1981): at bar 79 the cellos are supposed to go into the tenor clef but they plough on reading the line as though it were bass clef with unpleasant results that last for the next 16 bars.   

As far as I'm aware no reviewer has ever noticed or commented on this! 

Are there other cases where a glaring error (rather than something as straightforward as a simple cut) has caused toes to curl?

[chill319]

Great catch! The fault may have been in the printed parts, but surely Dorati should have caught it. I once saw the trombones of the NY Philharmonic miss a cue because they were reading paperbacks during live performance.

[Delicious Manager]

Great catch! The fault may have been in the printed parts, but surely Dorati should have caught it. I once saw the trombones of the NY Philharmonic miss a cue because they were reading paperbacks during live performance.

They should have been hauled over the coals! Books are forgiveable in rehearsal, but in performance, that's just UNPROFESSIONAL.

There's a Naxos recording of Respighi's Pines of Rome performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchesta conducted by Enrique Bátiz. In the final Appian Way section one can hear one of the percussionists (I know it's a percussionist because I know the musician involved and he told me) shout "Oi!!", trying to get the recording stopped because the section had lost its way. He failed. One needs to know that in the UK, where there is often no money for rehearsals, recordings are often made with minimal run-throughs and accidents like this can happen. It's a miracle that as many recordings by British orchestras are as good as they are.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Yes, it is truly amazing - British orchestras have the reputation for being the best sight readers in the world. I remember a conductor telling me he and the RSNO were recording an unfamiliar work which involved about 6 extra horn parts. They'd got some players in from a Swedish orchestra to do these. The conductor ran through the piece once with the orchestra, discussed some difficult passages, then said: "OK, gentlemen, let's do a take." Whereupon the Swedish horn players leapt up in consternation saying they needed a lot more rehearsal because they hadn't played the piece before.
They didn't get it - there was no time. Time is money.

[mbhaub]

Say what?

To the issue: maybe it's slightly sick, but I love finding errors in recordings. One of my favorites is in the Borodin 2nd symphony. Being a sometime percussionist, I noticed a glaring error in the drum part of the finale, when the bass drum and cymbal  come in at one point a bar later than they should if you play what's written. THe part is wrong. And most recordings get it right: at least someone was thinking. But not Valery Gergiev in his Rotterdam recording on Philips. Another favorite is Bernsteins's DVD of Mahler 7 with Vienna where the trombone enter a bar early and totally ruin the passage -- the conductor is oblivious. And listen to the drum player in the early Moralt recording of Schmidt's 4th. A high schooler could have done better. And the Klemperer Mahler 2 near the beginning where a bass player comes in early -- wouldn't show up on LP maybe, but there it is on CD for all to hear. Oh, that we were all so perfect...

[hammyplay]

OK this is an LP of a live performance but on IPL1001 (International Piano Library) Caren Goodin plays the Moszkowski Piano concerto. In the slow section of the scherzo she enters a bar early and continues playing out of sync with the orchestra. After 19 bars there is a 28 bar piano solo so the conductor can then bring the orchestra back in correctly but those 19 bars are ...interesting.
Rob

[eschiss1]

Hrm. Maybe this counts... an LP recording of Roger Sessions' 1938 string quartet no.1 (E minor) (maybe the 1970s one by the Amado String Quartet- I'm not positive) was ok, if I remember, until the really demanding finale- where the first violinist, again if I remember- it's been awhile since I heard this LP , in a library - seemed to lose control more and more -- and finally ended her line somewhere outside of the E major chord (I believe that her last note was supposed to be a high B, not a C-sharp, whatever the composer's later stylistic changes :^).  I've heard Prokofiev's sinfonia concertante for cello is similarly trap-ridden toward the close, actually...)

[Revilod]

An interesting example of how a single (and not even dissonant!) wrong note can constitute a "great" recording blunder occurs in Geza Anda's recording of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17, K.453  (part of his DG recording of all the concertos.)  At the end of the slow movement cadenza, during the trill, he plays a supertonic chord (D minor) instead of the expected dominant chord (G7)...which just amounts to an A instead of a B.  He then realizes his mistake and plays the correct chord. In this context the effect of that single wrong note is devastating but a solution is available and Anda cuts his losses!

[hadrianus]

A belated answer to Delicious Manager regarding the Batiz Naxos Respighi Recording: a more unpardonable error is that the trumpet sequence in the second movemet of Pini di Roma, which clearly states that it should be played offstage ("interna"), the sound engineer has it played normally in the emsemble!

[ArturPS]

Not a recording, but I've seen this live at the local orchestra. They were performing Beethoven's Choral Fantasy with this massive amateur choir. The conductor was the choir's conductor, but he should've known better. When the orchestra finally enters, the piano states the theme and variations ensue. There is a string quartet variation that has the cello written on the G clef. What one must do in this case is figure out if that is one octave higher or if that is to sound as written. Usually when cellos go to G clef without a C clef before, it's one octave higher than it sounds, it's only concert pitch if it's following a C clef, or when it's dead obvious (like a rising scale).
Every rehearsal the cellist couldn't get his part right and I kept wondering to myself why would Beethoven do that to the poor man, then I saw the score. Since I was 16 at the time, no one listened to me and thus it went to performance. Of course he couldn't play that properly, it came out aweful.
This guy is also a teacher at the university (choral conducting) and I was singing in the choir this girl got together to perform this piece at her graduation. I warned her this might happen and it did. At least she corrected the cellist (another one, pickup orchestra for the event) and thanked me, but it amazes me that the guy still was unaware and didn't warn her as her teacher.

[fuhred]

The LSO's timpanist in the 1960s seemed to miss his cues quite a lot - I have noticed this a few times in Markevitch's recordings of Tchaikovsky's First and Second Symphonies, as well as Kertesz's Dvorak Eighth. Can anybody else add to this list?

Also, Dorati's earlier recording of The Sleeping Beauty with the Minneapolis Symphony had a few fluffs of its own, particularly in the 'Puss in Boots and the White Cat' dance in Act III. This was misread/missing accidentals in the score, but still...

Still with Tchaikovsky, Peter Donohoe misreads a passage twice (at 0'35" and 3'47") in the finale of his highly over-rated recording of the Second Piano Concerto.

And there's another on-stage instead of off-stage trumpet blunder in Charles Munch's recording of Beethoven's Leonore Overture No.3. Beethoven's intended effect is totally ruined.

Does anyone else think that the trumpets are an absolute mess in the first movement of Kubelik's DG recording of Janacek's Sinfonietta?

Lastly, there must be several recordings where conductors make the mistake of replacing the tambourine with the snare drum (tamburo for tamburino). A simple but annoying error.

[mbhaub]

Lastly, there must be several recordings where conductors make the mistake of replacing the tambourine with the snare drum (tamburo for tamburino). A simple but annoying error.

You have no idea how often this occurs. As a percussionist, I frequently have to correct players who are too lazy to look up Italian, German, or French spellings of words and are playing on the wrong instrument. Just last night we were reading Chadwick's Symphony Sketches. I was on cymbals, another player on tamburino. So what does he play? Snare drum, of course! I told him to get a tambourine and he argued, wrongly, about it. I grabbed my music dictionary for percussionists that I'm never without, made him read it and he switched. Conductors, most of whom were violinists or pianists, are mostly clueless what happens in the percussion section. This same misreading also is quite common in Mahler's 3rd and there's more than one recording where the tambourine part is wrongly played on snare drum.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Holbrooke in "Queen Mab" calls for a Dulcimer (ad. lib.) in the list of required instruments given before the first page of the score, but then proceeds to label it "Cembalo". This has caused some writers to think he meant a harpsichord (e.g. the compiler of the BBC Catalogue of Orchestral Music), even though the part is written on only one stave. But here, of course, the confusion is the composer's fault. Interestingly, he correctly distinguishes between "tambour", "tambour tenore" and "tambourino" - all of which he asks for.

[eschiss1]

is there any etymological connection between cembalo and cimbalom (the word I'm guessing Holbrooke- well, may have meant?) that's interesting. The derivation I think I remember hearing (hrm. must look that up again... ...) for the word cimbalom suggests maybe not...

[Gareth Vaughan]

I wondered that too - but I don't think there is.