Harpist's Pre-Concert Tuning Mistaken for Actual Performance, Receives Standing Ovation

Principal harpist Seraphina Glissando received an unexpected standing ovation Tuesday evening for what was, by her own account, 'literally just tuning' — a pre-concert warmup routine that approximately 800 audience members mistook for a solo performance. The confusion arose because Glissando, who tunes her 47 strings onstage before the orchestra assembles, began her routine while the house lights were still dimming. The audience, many of whom had never attended an orchestral concert, interpreted the cascading arpeggios, harmonic checks, and pedal adjustments as an opening solo. 'I was checking my E-flats,' Glissando said. 'I do a full chromatic check, then I run through the main key centers of the program, then I do a few glissandi to test the regulation. It sounds nice, I suppose, but it's purely functional. I'm essentially a piano tuner who happens to be visible.' The audience was transfixed. 'It was ethereal,' said first-time concertgoer Michael Parterre. 'She was playing these gorgeous sweeping sounds. Some fast, some slow. It had structure. It had dynamics. It had emotional range. I assumed it was a harp concerto. A modern one, maybe, with an unusual form.' When Glissando finished her tuning and the orchestra began assembling for the opening Haydn overture, the audience erupted in applause. Several patrons stood. A few whistled. 'I looked up and people were clapping,' Glissando said. 'I had been adjusting my D-sharps. I panicked and sort of... bowed? Which I realize in retrospect made it worse, because now they think I was performing.' The actual program — Haydn, Ravel, and Respighi — was described by multiple audience members as 'good but not as good as that harp thing at the beginning.' One patron asked an usher when 'the opening harpist' would return for an encore. Glissando has been asked by the marketing department to extend her tuning routine by several minutes for future concerts. She has declined, noting that 'if I tune any longer, the strings will be wrong by the time the concert starts.' She has, however, agreed to bow after tuning 'if it makes people happy.'