No-show bug must be going around

It seemed like a perfect -- and perfectly balanced -- week for the piano, the musical equivalent of Apollo and Dionysus appearing at the same party. On March 15, the stately, golden-toned Murray Perahia was to perform a recital at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The following night, the romantic, impetuous Martha Argerich would lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Beethoven's First Piano Concerto.

Neither event, as it turned out, would come to pass.

Both Perahia and Argerich canceled -- Perahia with hand trouble, Argerich after a gallbladder operation -- joining a striking number of concert and opera musicians this season who have been too sick to perform.

"They come in waves," says Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic's president. "We've been lucky for the last four or five years. But it's been a tidal wave."

In fact, at the end of last week the orchestra announced the 10th cancellation of its season: Helene Grimaud, a young French pianist, was to play Rachmaninoff this Thursday and Sunday but canceled because of the aftereffects of pneumonia. (Andre Watts will appear in her stead.) Those shows were to bookend a Randy Newman concert Saturday night at Disney Hall. But that was postponed until November because Newman broke his wrist.

The Philharmonic is hardly alone. James Levine, the popular conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera, canceled the remainder of his season with the Met, as well as concerts and a tour with the BSO, after an onstage fall and ensuing shoulder surgery. Seiji Ozawa of the Vienna State Opera dropped out of concerts because of shingles. Mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson has failed to meet several commitments over the last year -- including the San Francisco Opera premiere performances of John Adams' new opera, "Doctor Atomic" -- because of a lower back injury. Placido Domingo canceled several Met performances in February, as well as appearances elsewhere as "Parsifal," because of an inflamed windpipe. And so on.

So how are the Philharmonic and other organizations coping with this slew of no-shows?

"You have to stop doing everything that you're doing -- immediately," says Chad Smith, who became the Philharmonic's vice president of artistic planning in January right as the trouble began. "You have to make sure Thursday night's concert happens" -- and is up to the standards the audience, conductor and players are accustomed to.