My friend went to go see the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra perform the Mahler 5th. As Murphy's law would have it, she suddenly had this incredible need to cough during one of the hushed movements. Not wanting to offend other concertgoers who are clearly not in the know about how it used to be ok to cough, talk, etc. during performances, she attempted to suppress her cough by covering her mouth with a wad of tissue. This caused her to have some difficulty breathing, which in turn triggered a lachrymal response. Tears overfloweth and wouldn't stop for the rest of the performance.
She sat close enough to the orchestra (4th row) that several violinists noticed her. One of them kept making eye contact with her and smiled at her approvingly when the piece finally ended.
An audience member was so moved by her gushing tears that he went up to her after the concert and told her that she must have such an honest heart to have such a reaction to the music. "I was so moved by your open emotions," he said to her.
"Ah, if only they knew. . .."
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3 comments:
Your friend sounds like a splendid woman. She may come to one of my concerts any time she likes. I will give her free tickets.
As a performer myself, I have mixed feelings about this. I generally don't want people coughing and making noise during really hushed sections of music, but our director goes so far as to write notes about when and when not to clap *into* our program. What is wrong with being so moved by music that you clap at the "wrong" time? It's more of a heartfelt response and feels much more interactive. Jazz audiences do this all the time. In rock, the audience hoots and screams during the performance. Only in classical music do we have audience nazis. Hmm. Maybe this is fodder for a later post. . ..
I don't care *too* much if people clap between movements (hell, I'm so glad they paid money to listen to me that I can't afford to be too snotty about that), but my colleagues don't like it because it disrupts their concentration and the continuity between movements. For example, we're playing a piece right now where the first movement ends in F and the second begins, most unexpectedly, in D flat. You lose the full effect of this if there's applause. I wouldn't go so far as to write things in the programme notes about it (generally, the offenders don't read the programme anyway), but I prefer when they don't clap.
Recently, we played in a small town where a lot of people were first-time concert-goers, and they did clap between movements, but they were so hushed and respectful while we were playing, we forgave them. They were also really sweet and thanked us effusively after the concert and gave us brownies. Mmm, brownies!
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