I’ve spent a very productive and exciting afternoon in the new concert-hall, exploring some new ideas for next year.
Without giving too much away, Mark (our new technician) and I have been finding ways to re-imagine, or redefine, the hall for a particular concert I’m planning – this afternoon we mocked up the event, played with lighting and multi-media, and crafted a completely different space in the hall.
It feels almost as if we’re imposing, digitally, a new identity on the hall, re-purposing it both visually and acoustically using digital technology to make it feel very different to its customary incarnation. There’s some additional avenues to explore resulting from this afternoon’s efforts, which will enhance the effect further still.
We’re already very excited about the event – and the academic year hasn’t even begun! Watch this (re-imagined) space sometime in the spring…
Last Friday night’s visit from the Brodsky Quartet was eagerly awaited for two very special reasons; not only was it their chance-driven ‘Wheel of 4-Tunes’ concert celebrating the group’s fortieth birthday, it was also the first formal concert in the new Colyer-Fergusson concert hall.
The Brodsky Quartet in the new concert-hall
The programme, chosen on the night by the spin of the wheel, included turns (no pun intended!) from Professor Keith Mander, a member of the public, Music Society Secretary and cellist Aisha Bové, and our very own Sophie Meikle. The pieces the wheel chose were by Piazzolla, Barber, Golijov, and Ravel, and displayed the quartet in their customary eclectic form, whether tango-ing in idiomatic style with Piazolla or exquisitely painting the famous ‘Adagio’ from Barber’s String Quartet.
The final piece in the concert was Ravel’s String Quartet, and it was here that the Brodsky’s revealed their final masterstroke; equally robust and rainbow-hued, Ravel’s piece was shown, in the wider context of the other pieces which had appeared in the programme, to be a modernist piece, bristling with harmonic dissonances, spiky textures, sudden changes of mood and pace, and bold gestures that are often obscured by performance that prefer to embrace Ravel’s Impressionist tendencies. Whilst the quartet was fully alive to the rich and exotic harmonies and sinuous melodic lines that give Ravel this label, they also brought out Ravel’s more striking characteristics in a performance that drew fierce applause from a delighted audience.
Music Society Secretary, cellist and soprano Aisha Bove spins the Brodsky wheel
Call me what you will, but I believe there’s an inherent snobbery about how concert audiences are expected to behave.
In the sacred cathedral that has become the Modern Concert Hall, audience members are expected to adopt an almost religious state of silent obeisance before The Music: they must enter the hall with trepidation and awe, with veneration in their hearts, and are expected to listen in a state almost bordering on ecstasy. Not until the end are they permitted to move a muscle, at which point they are then permitted to clap politely – nay,enthusiastically (although not too much of course) – and, if at a jazz gig or a promenade-type concert, they are occasionally allowed to whoop.
Now don’t get me wrong: I understand that listening to music is a deeply personal experience, and I can get as annoyed as anyone by inconsiderate or rude behaviour from someone in the same audience as myself. But if someone has been so moved by a piece that they feel the need to express this, why shouldn’t they ? I have a fantastic live recording of a performance of Walton’s First Symphonyby the National Orchestra of Wales at the Albert Hall; for anyone who doesn’t know this piece, the first movement is of such epic proportions (it’s about fifteen minutes long) that it seems like a whole work in itself. It has pounding rhythms, stirring melodies, and a relentless energy that drives the music to a tremendous climax in a fierce final gesture, punctuated by timpani. In the recording, a smattering of enthusiastic applause breaks out spontaneously at the movement’s conclusion amongst some of the audience who just can’t help themselves: the music is so rousing, it just demands a response.
Yet the Apostles of the Sacred Mysteries of the Concert Hall frown upon those who don’t know any better than to actually clap between individual movements, rather than waiting until the piece is finished. The slight rustling of a programme attracts fierce stares.
But perhaps it’s a cultural thing: after all, the etiquette of modern concert audiences is relatively recent. Until the end of the nineteenth century, audience behaviour was completely different; people went to be seen as much as to see the concert: it was a social occasion at which they talked, ate, and drank during a performance. Modern rules were laid down, according to Alex Ross in The Rest Is Noise, by the composer-conductor Gustav Mahler, who instilled in audiences the ideas of complete, attentive silence and no applause until the end of a piece.
And some semblance of the old culture still survives: Italian opera-goers give standing ovations (or vehement boos) after a particular singer has given a great (or disastrous) rendition of an aria. In the middle of an opera. It’s an accepted, even expected, part of the performance experience. Conductors will pause at the end of arias where they know this will happen, even if the music is supposed to carry straight on. The audience are expected to voice their reaction during a piece.
As long as their response isn’t disruptive, I don’t mind if someone is so moved by their experience that they applaud between movements. People go to concerts to be moved, to be emotionally engaged.
How do you think audiences should behave ?
Because it does. Doesn't it ? Blogging about extra-curricular musical life at the University of Kent.
crafted a completely different space in the hall.
