There is no such thing as a flawless live musical performance. Mishaps can range all the way from barely audible misplaced accents to slightly out-of- tune notes, missed notes, and wrong notes. Yet during any ensemble concert—whether chamber music, symphonic, or opera—surely the most glaring mishap to a listener’s ear occurs when a player shatters the silence of a musical rest with a premature entrance, or “biff,” as we musicians call it.
A biff is also the one orchestral accident most likely to give a conductor a heart attack. (Actually, only we musicians get heart attacks—conductors “suffer coronaries.”) It might be the lone shriek of a fiddle, a blast of brass, a woodwind croak, a chorister’s yelp, even an accidentally dropped string-player’s bow or a horn-player’s mute, bouncing on the floor with a hollow ping that echoes all the way up to the balcony. The point is that a musical atrocity has been committed and the professional quality of the entire performance wrecked.
Moreover, though every maestro imagines that he has radar-hearing and perfect pitch, the culprit is not always easily identified. Many an innocent musician has received a hate-filled glare meant for a biffer nearby, and many conductors resort to informers within the orchestra to verify the identity of a biffer.
Once a musician has been branded as a biffer, in the murky depths of the maestro’s brain the culprit, innocent or not, is doomed. Henceforth, the baton wielder will regard the biffer as an inattentive incompetent never again to be trusted.
A biffer is a saboteur, a menace, a dormant bomb waiting to explode. A biffer guarantees a bad review from the critics, since one trademark of an amateur orchestra is an abundance of biffs. Never mind that the biffer played 40 years of competent, biff-free performances—musicians are only as good as the last note they played. Never mind that the poor devil had a bout of indigestion, or a migraine, or just discovered that his wife is sleeping with the tuba player. Maybe he just had a death in the family, or his cat recently expired. Whatever or whoever caused that momentary lapse of concentration is irrelevant. The biff is the orchestral kiss of death, and the criminal can never be forgiven, ever.
Some naïve biffers have been known to slink into the conductor’s dressing room after a performance and apologize. The maestro may either toss the culprit out on his ear—or, in rare cases, if the biffer is a valued principal player—the apology may lead to a hug and kiss, even feigned tears (particularly in operatic circles), and the musician leaves the maestro with a light heart, feeling purged, totally forgiven. But forgiveness is not in a conductor’s repertoire; it exists only in a musician’s imagination. Indeed, the conductor, still seething and writhing under his sweat-soaked tails from a wrecked performance, now regards the biffer with even more contempt than before, for whining like a coward, for being unable to accept damnation. And you can be sure that the “forgiven” offenders will be the primary suspects the next time a biff comes from their direction.
Oddly, biffs can be contagious. I recall a Met Opera season when, after weeks of biff-free performances, all hell broke loose during a Mozart opera loaded with recitatives (which are notorious as minefields for premature entrances). Here is where lightning reflexes and good peripheral vision can mean orchestral life or death for a musician. (Thanks to my youthful prowess as a ping-pong hustler, I’m still alive, orchestrally speaking.) In all fairness to the biffers on this occasion, our guest conductor’s preparatory beats were somewhat jerky and unclear, and at times it was difficult to distinguish an upbeat from a downbeat.
The first biff came from a fiddle, shattering the silent bar with such a resonant yet raucous sound that it evoked smiles and a few guffaws from the orchestra—but alas, not from the conductor, or from the singers onstage, who were mortified. Moments later, when the merriment had barely subsided, a cellist biffed into a rest—followed by a lengthy biff, ripped off by a double-bass, that sounded like a flatulent elephant. By this time, our maestro’s facial pallor had turned to a rich shade of purple, enhanced by the veins popping out on his moist forehead.
A music critic with an affinity for metaphors might have described this flurry of biffs as an “orchestral mutiny,” or a “symphonic rebellion,” yet the reviewer mercifully referred to it as “a few moments of ragged ensemble.” Fortunately for the biffers, our crestfallen maestro was a foreign guest-conductor with a somewhat obscure reputation, and since his clout with the Met management was equally obscure, no one was fired.
Unquestionably, the all-time record for biffs was set during a concert in the luxurious Concord Hotel in the Catskill Mountain region, also known as the “Borscht Belt,” which flourished as a vacation destination until the middle 1960s. Every Thursday in July and August was “Concert Night” in the immense Imperial Room nightclub. Sholem Secunda, a short bald man with a potbelly and bright blue eyes, was the conductor. He was a respected veteran of the Yiddish theater, the composer of “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” (perhaps the most popular Yiddish tune ever published), and was notoriously famous for once rejecting a young, unknown composer named George Gershwin as his assistant.
The hotel’s weekly concert program featured “The Concord Symphony Orchestra with a solo by a world-famous concert artist,” and the obligatory male and female vocalists, who were the staples of all Borscht Circuit entertainment. The orchestra was a motley crew unequaled in the history of music. Young members of the Concord dance band sat next to elderly survivors from the pits of defunct Yiddish music halls. Local Catskill schoolteachers on vacation played viola and violin alongside seasoned freelancers from the five boroughs of New York. (The latter always arrived at the pre-rehearsal lunch breathless and hungry, after a hectic trip along Route 17, with a stop at the Red Apple diner to pay the speedy famished driver his “mileage fee.”) And incredibly, the freelancers included some former NBC Symphony members, who were desperate for any work at all since their legendary maestro, Arturo Toscanini, had retired, and the famed orchestra had disbanded. In short, the benevolent owner of the hotel wanted his guests to get their money’s worth, and Secunda obliged by fleshing out the string sections with anyone who could hold a fiddle and sit upright in a chair onstage.
A typical program would begin with a familiar overture like the “Poet and Peasant” or an abridged version of Rossini’s William Tell. Then the Concord clientele might be serenaded with Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony,” or awakened from their post-dinner torpor by a rousing butchering of Liszt’s Les Preludes. The “featured concert artist”—usually a teenage Juilliard student—stepped up next, playing a movement from the Mendelssohn or Tchaikovsky concerto for a very small fee. Finally, no Concord concert would be complete without a soprano (usually a buxom lass with a shameless cleavage and shameful intonation), and a tenor (usually a middle-aged hack with a corset around his gut and a yarmulke masking his bald pate), both of whom would be touted as “direct from the Metropolitan Opera,” which was untrue, unless it was Jan Peerce or Richard Tucker on one of the Jewish High Holidays.
To the dismay of those of us with an ear for pitch, sopranos with limited upper registers often shrieked out chestnuts like “The Bell Song” from Lakmé, or “Musetta’s Waltz” from La bohème, while tenors with weak middle registers and wobbly vibratos croaked their way through everything from “Di provenza” to “A Yiddishe Momma,” a guaranteed kosher-hotel tearjerker. Traditionally, all concerts closed with a hodgepodge of tunes from musicals such as Showboat or My Fair Lady, with the audience tapping their feet and humming along while sipping alcoholic beverages at small circular tables. (An exception to this programming was the “Fourth of July Special,” when we would close with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, with the Monticello Fire Department providing the fireworks during the coda.)
Needless to say, this was a far cry from Carnegie Hall, and Secunda was no Toscanini. The orchestra held its three-hour concert rehearsal after a gratis lunch in the Concord main dining room, which left the musicians bloated and belching from double helpings of herring in cream sauce and blintzes with sour cream. That one rehearsal we had for these ambitious programs consisted of three hours of chaos, with maestro Secunda shouting and swearing over a multitude of mishaps. Biffs and wrong notes at these rehearsals were de rigueur, and my eyes would tear from laughing along with my Czech stand-partner, who was actually a Concord ski instructor as well as the bass player in the dance band—and, like most Czechs I’ve known, an amateur violinist.
After the rehearsal we would refresh ourselves with a brief swim in the Olympian pool, where ex-Tarzan movie star Buster Crabbe was the instructor (when he was not smoking, sipping coffee, and autographing menus in the Concord snack bar). Then we would shower backstage, don our tuxes, and head for the main dining room for the evening meal, which can hardly be imagined in this era of nouvelle cuisine and carb consciousness.
Musicians are notorious for huge appetites, particularly when the meal is free. Gargantuan mounds of kosher food blessed our table, beginning with appetizers of kishka and leaden dumplings, with entrees of duckling or steak (we always had both), rich soups (loaded with gas-provoking legumes), and dairy-free desserts that, despite their faux dairy ingredients, were a cardiologist’s nightmare of fat and cholesterol. What we could not eat we took with us. We stuffed everything from cookies, to steak, to duckling in a greasy sauce (which sometimes leaked onto the opulent lobby carpeting when the sated musicians emerged from the dining room) into Saran-lined tux pockets, attaché cases, and even shopping bags.
On this memorable night of biff history, Maestro Secunda had a pre-concert brainstorm. An ensemble of gypsies had recently been hired to stroll in the vast Concord lobby and charm the guests with violins and a cimbalom. They were an affable bunch, and actually quite competent when it came to serenading guests with tunes from Old Europe.
Maestro Secunda, however, had neglected to ask if they were familiar with the elements of musical notation. They did have tuxedos though, and presented an impressive addition to the second-violin section, where they were seated next to the former NBC Symphony men. The cimbalom player was assigned to the percussion section, where he set up his paraphernalia next to the kettledrum.
Not to be left out, a dishwasher from the Concord kitchen—who loved classical music and had recently been teaching himself how to play the violin (on a plastic fiddle with a fiberglass bow from the Sam Ash music store in Manhattan), and had even learned how to read music from a pamphlet enclosed with the violin kit—was invited to join the music-making and seated next to an NBC violinist.
Our maestro’s brainstorm included presenting our audience with a work that would honor our new gypsy colleagues and provide a vehicle (in an ad lib context) for the humble cimbalom player to express himself: Georges Enesco’s Romanian Rhapsody No. 2, a difficult virtuoso piece for orchestra and, with only one rehearsal, a challenge for even the NBC veterans.
The rehearsal went surprisingly well. The gypsies and the dishwasher had enough sense to lay low and let the NBC boys carry the load, while the cimbalom player proved himself a talented improviser (with a few extra cadenzas tossed in for good measure.) As a matter of fact, the gypsy violinists were masters of the art of mime, and one could swear they were playing fortissimo when they were actually playing flautando—which means an excess of bow stroke with a minimum of pressure and sound. (When they played in the lobby, they had amplified electronic support.)
The evening concert, however, was another story altogether. To celebrate their symphonic debut, the gypsies had overindulged in a pre-concert guzzle of 100-proof plum brandy. This concert would be their moment of glory, and furthermore, the “Rhapsody” contains some folk tunes from Old Eastern Europe that they knew would tear the house down.
After faking their way through the overture, the gypsies beamed with joy to hear the Concord Master of Ceremonies proudly announce that, “the usual violin soloist would be dispensed with on this occasion, in order to honor the gypsies with the Romanian Rhapsody. So let’s hear it, folks, for our wonderful musicians from the lobby!” (Thunderous applause, and the clinking of cocktail mixers on glasses, while the NBC musicians groaned and glanced at each other apprehensively.)
Now Enesco was not a bad composer, and his two rhapsodies were is certainly not the worst variations on folk tunes ever written. Yet what came out of our orchestra that night was surely the most catastrophic explosion of biffs ever to grace a symphonic performance. All the discretion the gypsies had practiced at rehearsal was tossed aside. Instead—fortified by the plum brandy and inspired by the emcee’s flattering introduction—the gypsies had a field day. Echoing from the mirrored walls of the Imperial Room like cannon shots, the biffs and wrong notes came fast and furious, while Maestro Secunda, helpless and wide-eyed, gamely kept flailing his baton with his right hand while futilely trying to stifle the biffs with the flapping motions of his left hand.
The debacle ended with a polite trickle of applause, mostly from guests either drunk or tone-deaf, while many in the audience headed for the exits to spend the remainder of the concert in an adjoining nightclub featuring a Latin band. The male and female vocalists went through their paces like tired horses, and were despondent to behold the thinned-out audience remaining for their half-hearted rendition of tunes from Showboat. After the concert, Secunda raced backstage like a madman and confronted his confidante and Manhattan contractor, Boris Molina, a trombonist from the Jewish theater days who was the size of a sumo wrestler and two feet taller than Secunda.
“Boris,” he cried, “what the hell happened?”
“The gypsies,” said Molina, sighing. “They can’t read a note of music. Sholem, I didn’t hire them. YOU did! I hire only NBC guys who played with Toscanini …”
Secunda’s face was crimson. “No, Boris! Don’t tell ME! I am not deaf and blind! It was those NBC guys who biffed! They eat like pigs at lunch and dinner! How can anyone play a fiddle after stuffing himself with kishka and duckling? And schlepping food out of the dining room without shame, like animals!”
A beaten man, Boris shrugged. You don’t argue with a conductor who is also a world-famous composer and once even rejected George Gershwin for an assistant. The former NBC musicians were not hired again. The gypsies returned to strolling the lobby, but were eventually fired after several guests complained that some jewelry was missing from their hotel rooms.
The dishwasher, however, remained to enjoy playing in the Concord Symphony, and even got himself a local union card, “just to make it kosher.” (Secunda’s words.) Moreover, his countless biffs went miraculously unheard in subsequent concerts. No one had ever told him—not even his former NBC stand-partner, who had played under Toscanini—that his fiberglass bow needed a little rosining once in a while to produce a sound above a pianissimo on his plastic fiddle.
