In 1999, Italian conductor Riccardo Chailly and Portuguese pianist Maria Joao Pires got together for a lunchtime concert at Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. They are two of the world’s most renowned musicians, and this open rehearsal concert, which was held in front of 2,000 people, was supposed to go smoothly. But it became one of the most memorable moments in classical music.
As the orchestra began to play, Maria realized it was not the concerto she had rehearsed. The orchestra was playing Mozart Concerto No. 20 in D Minor (K. 466), while she had expected K.488 because that was what she was currently working with.
“She was shocked because she was expecting us to play another concerto,” Chailly recalls in an interview. So when I started the first bar of the D minor concerto, she jumped and panicked like an electric shock.”
Maria Joao Pires had been a last-minute replacement for another canceled pianist and had only received a call to join the rehearsal a day earlier. This was a Mozart and Mahler concert, and at the time, Maria had been touring playing the Mozart Concerto in C, K. 488.
Pianist Maria Joao Pires on finding composure in times of panic
In a viral video of the wrong concerto shared online, Maria panics when she realizes this is not what she had prepared for. As Chailly conducts the introduction, she tells him that this is not what she prepared for and that she “cannot do the probe.” A probe is short for “sitzprobe,” a rehearsal where soloists perform with the orchestra to harmonize the two groups before a performance.
Twenty-five years later, in an interview with Joanna Gosling, a Classic FM presenter, Maria Joao Pires recalls that “it was terrifying.” She had played the K. 488 more than 10 months earlier and didn’t think she could remember it.
In the video, Maria exchanges words with Chailly while the strings and woodwind play. The conductor is calm even though he knows she is scared and encourages her to try recalling the piece. He tells her: “You know it too well. You played it last season.”
As her piano part neared, Maria Joao Pires told Chailly she would recall the Mozart concerto and continue with the performance. She buried her head in her hand and seemed to mentally switch from the C major concerto she was expecting to the D minor concerto in mere seconds.
“The miracle is that she has such a memory that she could switch to a new concerto within a minute without making one mistake,” Chailly said.
How the miraculous recovery video went viral
The footage of this scary moment, followed by a miraculous recovery, was uploaded in 2009, but it was undiscovered for a while. However, in 2013, the press aired it, turning it into the classical hit it is today. In February 2024, Joanna Gosling re-shared the video, which became viral. Within 24 hours, it had garnered more than 4 million views, reminding us of the grace of Maria’s piano virtuosity and the aptitude of her musical mind.
In the interview with Joanna, Maria downplayed her memory, saying it was just average, unlike other musical virtuosos. Still, it’s an extraordinary testament to resilience, positivity, and trust. She also says that this confusion has happened two more times in her life.
A brief history of Maria Joao Pires’s musical journey
Maria remembers attending a concert by Ginette Neveu, a French violinist, as a child in Lisbon, Portugal. She recalls this concert as a “profound experience. I was only four years old, but I was already looking for a certain sound on the piano. There was something in Neveu’s sound, something completely personal yet which spoke only of the music itself. A few days later, she was killed in an air crash!”
She was also influenced by her father, even though he had died two weeks before her death, and her grandfather, who was a Buddhist. She says, in some ways, Buddhism influenced her music; “the breathing, the space and the quietness of the space.”
Maria Joao Pires was a music prodigy and won Portugal’s top prize for young musicians at the age of nine. She later studied music at the Lisbon Conservatoire before further studies with Rosl Schmid in Munich and Karl Enger in Hanover.
She won the Beethoven Bicentennial Competition in Brussels in 1970, which made her one of the most notable musicians worldwide. Although she doesn’t like “musical competitions,” this competition opened doors for her across Europe, and in 1989, she got an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon.
A classical music icon
Maria’s fans love her immersing them in classical music’s natural and inexpressible richness. Maria Joao Pires is among the best when it comes to Chopin, Mozart, and Schubert performances, and very few musicians can rival her chamber partnerships with Augustin Dumay (violin) and Jian Wang (Cello).
Her belief in the transcendental power of music inspires us to embrace its glorious influence. “We have a responsibility to lead our life in the best possible way, to help others, and to share this planet with compassion. Music and art are the deepest expressions of our soul and the direct transmission of our universe. I think everyone is born an artist, and art should be shared with everyone on this planet,” she says.
