Guide to Appropriate Audience Behavior
Here are some eventually not-particularly-musical thoughts about a Kennedy Center concert I went to yesterday evening, reproduced almost verbatim for expeditiousness' sake from an email I sent Jack earlier this afternoon.
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I should get around to blogging exactly the right amount about my most recent concert-goings but Guide to Strange Places is a hoot in concert. Vaguely hostile and Looney Tunes-esque rhythmic shenanigans; long dramatic pauses; eerie chorale passages. I thought the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst could have been a little bit punchier (that may largely be the orchestration though; string-heavy and very mid-period Stravinsky, especially Adams' use of the piano) but they sound just effortlessly technically proficient. One thing I really liked about the program was that in Tchaikovsky's sixth in the second half Welser-Möst used a couple of broader-than-usual dramatic pauses that seemed to me to call back to the gaps between those weird chorales in Guide. I didn't used to get excited by subtle communication between pieces within a concert program but there you have it.
Also: If you're an old dude in a yellow shirt whose seat is front-row center in the chorister section behind the stage, directly within the conductor's line of sight, you should make sure to get to your seat before the second half in a timely manner. Because if you wait until the conductor is ready to start conducting, such that he stands in his just-about-to-conduct pose while you slowly make your way to the center of your row, most of the people in the audience will laugh at you. Then they will applaud when you finally sit down. Then the conductor will wait a few more moments until the house is sufficiently settled down for the Extremely Sad Symphony to begin. I wondered what it would be like if the concert were taking place in, say, Yankee Stadium. (Boos? Epithets? Thrown bottles?)
Also also: Even though it's awesome when awesome modern music makes a toddler in the audience screech a little bit and hold his ears until his mother reluctantly removes him from the hall, it's not awesome enough that you can bring a toddler to an 8 pm weeknight orchestra concert and still get into heaven when you die. Despite the presence of a Mozart symphony on the program, this is not the same as one of those Classical Music Will Make Your Stupid Baby Smart tapes.
***************
I should get around to blogging exactly the right amount about my most recent concert-goings but Guide to Strange Places is a hoot in concert. Vaguely hostile and Looney Tunes-esque rhythmic shenanigans; long dramatic pauses; eerie chorale passages. I thought the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst could have been a little bit punchier (that may largely be the orchestration though; string-heavy and very mid-period Stravinsky, especially Adams' use of the piano) but they sound just effortlessly technically proficient. One thing I really liked about the program was that in Tchaikovsky's sixth in the second half Welser-Möst used a couple of broader-than-usual dramatic pauses that seemed to me to call back to the gaps between those weird chorales in Guide. I didn't used to get excited by subtle communication between pieces within a concert program but there you have it.
Also: If you're an old dude in a yellow shirt whose seat is front-row center in the chorister section behind the stage, directly within the conductor's line of sight, you should make sure to get to your seat before the second half in a timely manner. Because if you wait until the conductor is ready to start conducting, such that he stands in his just-about-to-conduct pose while you slowly make your way to the center of your row, most of the people in the audience will laugh at you. Then they will applaud when you finally sit down. Then the conductor will wait a few more moments until the house is sufficiently settled down for the Extremely Sad Symphony to begin. I wondered what it would be like if the concert were taking place in, say, Yankee Stadium. (Boos? Epithets? Thrown bottles?)
Also also: Even though it's awesome when awesome modern music makes a toddler in the audience screech a little bit and hold his ears until his mother reluctantly removes him from the hall, it's not awesome enough that you can bring a toddler to an 8 pm weeknight orchestra concert and still get into heaven when you die. Despite the presence of a Mozart symphony on the program, this is not the same as one of those Classical Music Will Make Your Stupid Baby Smart tapes.
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