Anybody missed a memorable concert..

[dylanesque]

due to bad traffic or other circumstances despite having a ticket?
I ask this because I missed Haydn "surprise" symphony (slightly ironic I guess) due to not finding a place near a particular venue. I was only a few minutes late but the supervisors at the door wouldn't let us in.
I ended up buying my wife and I a glass of red wine and fortunately didn't miss the main event (Beethoven 4 .had to edit this getting my concerts wrong doh)
It struck me how easy it would be to miss a great classical music concert due to bad luck as well.
Do any other forum members have any performances they have missed and regretted it?

[Sergeant Rock]

I missed a concert in Berlin during the 2007 Mahler Festival held at the Philharmonie (Boulez and Barenboim conducting the symphonies and song cycles). Mrs. Rock and I had tickets for Symphonies 5, 6, 7 and 8. I thought all the concerts started at 8 PM but the Sixth on Sunday began at 4 PM! By the time I noticed my mistake it was too late to make it to the Philharmonie on time. €198 down the drain. We stayed in the hotel and wept.

Sarge

[TheGSMoeller]

Two weeks ago I missed ASO and Donald Runnicles performing Beethoven's 9th...because of the musician lockout! 

Who knows, it could have been memorable. 

[Brian]

Two weeks ago I missed ASO and Donald Runnicles performing Beethoven's 9th...because of the musician lockout! 

Who knows, it could have been memorable. 

If that counts...

When I was moving to London, I got very excited that I would get to see my favorite living conductor, at last! Then the Charles Mackerras concert became a Charles Mackerras memorial concert.

[springrite]

Three months ago, we missed a Mahler concert because Kimi was 2 cm shorter than the minimum height requirement.

[Karl Henning]

Thank you for confirming that Mahler's music is a ride in a sonic theme park!       0:)   

[North Star]

Thank you for confirming that Mahler's music is a ride in a sonic theme park!       0:)   

Reminds me of a certain piece by a certain Russian composer 

[springrite]

Thank you for confirming that Mahler's music is a ride in a sonic theme park!       0:)   

So three months later we made up for it by taking her to Disneyland! Hooray!

[Karl Henning]

♫ It's a world of laughter, a world of tears . . . .

[Drasko]

Missed a few, ones I remember being annoyed about

- Kurt Weill's 2nd Symphony by local philharmonic (who knows when that's gonna get programmed again here)

- Moliere/Lully Le Bourgeois gentilhomme staging by Le Poème Harmonique

- Kemal Gekic recital with all four Chopin Ballades

[springrite]

♫ It's a world of laughter, a world of tears . . . .

I hate that song. Every time you hear it, it gets stuck in your head for six months.

I am really worried that it may replace "Gin heut' morgen umber's feld" which had been in her head for three years.

[dylanesque]

I've missed a few, usually through discovering too late that the transport links on which I rely are either subject to massive delay or not running at all.  Last time was different.  Vladimir Jurowski conducting the London Philharmonic in an all-Russian programme including Shchedrin's 2nd Concerto for Orchestra, a favourite piece which I had never heard performed live.  And still haven't.  Arrived in plenty of time, and 10 minutes before the start was sitting quietly with a drink, when without warning I developed a nosebleed.  And not a discreet trickle, but an explosive gusher which was impossible to staunch.  Half an hour later it had finally stopped, which in theory would have allowed me to go in for the Shchedrin, except that one cannot spray that much blood from one's nostrils without some impact upon one's appearance.  Or as Mrs Molloy chose to put it, she refused to enter a hall full of people in the company of someone who looked like he'd been slaughtering pigs in the men's room.

More distressing still, I find, are those occasions when one does make it it, but only just.  I could not number the times I've sprinted into the hall just as the doors are closing, and then sat there for the next twenty minutes sweating and trying not to wheeze too noisily, barely able to hear the music over the blood pounding in my ears.  Still livid in my memory is one Brucknerfest concert in the basilica of the St Florian monastery in Austria, Skrowaczewski conducting, broadcast live on the radio as all these things are.  I had excellent seats right down the front, in the first row of proper pews.  We left Salzburg in what should have been plenty of time, only to run into a monumental traffic jam on the autobahn, held us up for over an hour.  Sitting there stationary, we got used to the idea that we were going to miss it, however once past the jam the road cleared completely, and there was just a faint possibility - though unlikely - that we might make it after all.  If only Mrs Molloy, who was at the wheel while I navigated, could manage to overcome her natural caution.  It was 7:25 when we went past the Linz exit, Mrs Molloy shouting "I'm doing 150! I'm doing 160!" and me shouting back "Put your foot down, we're barely moving."  At 7:29 we roared up the main street of the sleepy little town that is St Florian, no time to find a parking place so dumped it in a driveway chosen at random, and ran for the church.  The ushers had closed the doors and were huddled outside catching a crafty smoke as I sprinted past, waving tickets in the air.  As I entered the church at the back, Skrowaczewski was making his way onto the platform, but fortunately he was already very old and not too steady on his pins, so by the time he had reached the podium I had made it to our seats ... only to find that there was a wooden door across the end of the pew which refused to open, no matter hard I tugged at it.  I was beginning to think I would have to vault over it head-first, when eventually I discovered it had been bolted on the inside...!!  The sheer unreasonableness of this really got to me - I mean who the hell bolts the seats shut before a concert, for God's sake? - which I believe I may have said out loud (words to the effect of), or so I was told by an Austrian friend listening to the radio, who said that my effing and jeffing was distinctly audible via the microphones directly overhead, which also picked up the sound of Mrs Molloy, who had chosen to wear for the occasion a pair of high-heeled boots with metal tips, clattering up the aisle behind me like a squadron of cavalry.

Ha ha your post really amused me. Don't mind if I avoid going with you to a concert

[listener]

Bernstein conducting IVES' 2nd with the NYPhO when they were on tour.  I was at a meeting run by a psychiatrist who we later discovered had put in a patient as treasurer. 

[Sergeant Rock]

The sheer unreasonableness of this really got to me - I mean who the hell bolts the seats shut before a concert, for God's sake? - which I believe I may have said out loud (words to the effect of), or so I was told by an Austrian friend listening to the radio, who said that my effing and jeffing was distinctly audible via the microphones directly overhead

In the solemn atmosphere of a church 

Sarge