Edinburgh International Festival

[LHC]

Mahler. Symphony No.3.

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Thomas Søndergård with The RSNO’s Youth Chorus and the Edinburgh Festival’s Chorus.

The Orchestra and the Choirs were absolutely at their peak last night with a radiant solo from Soprano Linda Watson.

The Mahler was preceded by a short work by James MacMillan in memory of a young player from the RSNO who died in tragic circumstances.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, someone obviously thought that in the name of inclusion, it would be a good idea to bring two people with profound learning difficulties to a sold out concert of one of the longest works in the repertoire. They shouted out during the poignant MacMillan work and then continued to call out during the quietest moments in the Mahler. It seems to have been recorded by the BBC but I doubt it’ll be suitable for broadcast.

What should the Hall’s management do? Had they been asked to leave I’m now sure it would have been reported widely in the media and a scandal would have ensued. However, 2,500 people were made to feel on edge as they waited for the next outburst.

It reminded me of an RSNO concert where someone thought that a babe in arms would enjoy an opportunity to hear Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. Of course, inevitably, the baby did what babies do and cried all the way through the slow movement. The baby’s creator seemed completely oblivious to the disruption it was causing and didn’t feel it was necessary to remove said baby. After the interval, the family unit was moved to the most expensive seats where it managed to make an unscored contribution to Beethoven’s Seventh.

There was a similar issue recently at a performance by Matt Forde during the fringe festival. Parents had brought a baby with them, and when the baby started to cry, as babies often do, selfishly decided that their right to stay was more important than anyone else's right to enjoy the performance they had paid for. Matt Forde tweeted afterwards that his set had been ruined by the baby and the parents' actions:

""Someone brought their baby to my show (Matt Forde: Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right) last night. Sadly it derailed large parts of it because they wouldn't do the decent thing and just leave when it started crying. I get that it must be tough as a new parent but please, don't bring babies to adult shows. It's always a problem. I realise this sounds a bit whiny but it’s just to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s like someone’s phone continually ringing and them not turning it off. I’ve had so many messages from people who were there last night who were very polite about the fact it pissed them off."

Predictably, he had lots of responses from outraged parents decrying his attitude and response. But as he says, if you or the person you bring with you to a show starts making enough noise to disturb other people, you should do the decent thing and leave the auditorium.

[LHC]

Quote from a letter in the August issue of Opera, from Jane Monari:

There it is, in a nutshell. Rights ('humanity') trump responsibility (to 'high art'), at least according to current Anglo-American social norms. This isn't the first such trouble at this year's Festival, with even alternative comics getting steamed up about it:

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/matt-forde-crying-baby-show/

Personally, I suppose I'm conflicted. I wouldn't like to think of anyone being excluded from concerts for any reason, and I heartily dislike the "sacred silence" which attends most of them. I remember once being disapprovingly shushed at the Festival by a pearl-festooned lady, for daring to laugh out loud at one of Haydn's symphonic jokes. Most professional musicians are quite hardened to unexpected vocal contributions, and learn to "zone it out" as easily as carers have to.

Yet I am discomforted by the obvious discomfort of people around me, who obviously expect concentrated quiet, and who have an equal "right" to enjoy the concert in their way. If a large proportion of the audience needs silence, then perhaps democracy should rule. It's a thorny one.

I expect most people would be fine with your laughing at one of Haydn's jokes. However, if you then spent the next five minutes loudly explaining the joke to the person next to you, I expect they might be less forgiving.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Mahler. Symphony No.3.

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Thomas Søndergård with The RSNO’s Youth Chorus and the Edinburgh Festival’s Chorus.

The Orchestra and the Choirs were absolutely at their peak last night with a radiant solo from Soprano Linda Watson.

The Mahler was preceded by a short work by James MacMillan in memory of a young player from the RSNO who died in tragic circumstances.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, someone obviously thought that in the name of inclusion, it would be a good idea to bring two people with profound learning difficulties to a sold out concert of one of the longest works in the repertoire. They shouted out during the poignant MacMillan work and then continued to call out during the quietest moments in the Mahler. It seems to have been recorded by the BBC but I doubt it’ll be suitable for broadcast.

What should the Hall’s management do? Had they been asked to leave I’m now sure it would have been reported widely in the media and a scandal would have ensued. However, 2,500 people were made to feel on edge as they waited for the next outburst.

It reminded me of an RSNO concert where someone thought that a babe in arms would enjoy an opportunity to hear Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. Of course, inevitably, the baby did what babies do and cried all the way through the slow movement. The baby’s creator seemed completely oblivious to the disruption it was causing and didn’t feel it was necessary to remove said baby. After the interval, the family unit was moved to the most expensive seats where it managed to make an unscored contribution to Beethoven’s Seventh.

The solution is something along the lines of the relaxed Prom where the normal concert “rules “ are suspended - trouble is you can’t do a repeat perf of Mahler 3, Something similar happened at an Opera I went to. I didn’t complain but I could tell it was disturbing quite a lot of the audience . I spoke to the theater manager who agreed it had disrupted the evening but said there nothing they could do without landing themselves in a ton of trouble. I would love to be a fly on the wall for the “what are we going to do about this “ discussions on the recording of last nights concert concert. I suspect it will never go out.
On a separate note some local supermarkets now have autism and neuro diverse friendly sessions with minimal announcements , no music and subdued lighting. I once asked whether these could be made a permanent feature …

[Bryn]

The solution is something along the lines of the relaxed Prom where the normal concert “rules “ are suspended - trouble is you can’t do a repeat perf of Mahler 3, Something similar happened at an Opera I went to. I didn’t complain but I could tell it was disturbing quite a lot of the audience . I spoke to the theater manager who agreed it had disrupted the evening but said there nothing they could do without landing themselves in a ton of trouble. I would love to be a fly on the wall for the “what are we going to do about this “ discussions on the recording of last nights concert concert. I suspect it will never go out.
On a separate note some local supermarkets now have autism and neuro diverse friendly sessions with minimal announcements , no music and subdued lighting. I once asked whether these could be made a permanent feature …

from http://www.users.waitrose.com/~chobb...urycardew.html

The composer John Paynter quoted a letter from The Guardian:

Having sat through most of Act 1 of a ballet at the Royal Opera House while two ladies next to me talked incessantly I risked a polite remonstrance. One of them replied, 'But it's only music.' Is there any reply to this?[21]

Cardew would have relished such an opportunity more than most. Over the last ten years of his life he came to see the development of music as inseparable from man's struggle against privilege, injustice, systematised greed, and exploitation. He believed that it was only through the combination of artistic and political action that contemporary music could be dragged out of its isolation.

Back in the early 1970s Christopher Hobbs (who now runs JEMS) and his three co-members of Promenade Theatre Orchestra (better known as PTO) gave a concert at The Orangery, Holland Park. A baby was present in the audience and made occasional ad hoc vocal contributions to the proceedings. I had just bought a Tandberg reel-to-reel tape recorder and used it to record the event. The baby's interjections add a delightful character to that recording: http://experimentalmusic.co.uk/wp/em...ngery-concert/

That said, I'd rather such audience participation was generally avoided.

[Master Jacques]

I think Cardew had a point. Something has gone wrong with an 'art music' so self-regarding as to demand absolute silence: it signifies a decadent isolationism which is ultimately self-defeating. Live audiences are part of the show, after all.

We've moved a long way from Mozart, whose whole aim in writing his 'Paris' Symphony was to promote as much audience noise (in the way of applause, audible comments, cheering and bravos, during the music) as humanly possible. His letters to his father, outlining how he was going about achieving that, and his elation when it came off, makes fascinating reading from another planet.

We can't go back, but perhaps we're in a transitional phase moving away from the sepulchral, holy silence nurtured by the Stokowski generation and accepted since as the norm. If libraries can change - and they have - perhaps concert halls ought to think about it too?

[Ein Heldenleben]

I think Cardew had a point. Something has gone wrong with an 'art music' so self-regarding as to demand absolute silence: it signifies a decadent isolationism which is ultimately self-defeating. Live audiences are part of the show, after all.

We've moved a long way from Mozart, whose whole aim in writing his 'Paris' Symphony was to promote as much audience noise (in the way of applause, audible comments, cheering and bravos, during the music) as humanly possible. His letters to his father, outlining how he was going about achieving that, and his elation when it came off, makes fascinating reading from another planet.

We can't go back, but perhaps we're in a transitional phase moving away from the sepulchral, holy silence nurtured by the Stokowski generation and accepted since as the norm. If libraries can change - and they have - perhaps concert halls ought to think about it too?

Didn’t listening in silence , with lights dimmed, more or less come in with Wagner and the whole Bayreuth experience? All part of music becoming a rite or a substitute religion rather than an entertainment I guess. The only place I’ve ever seen audience interaction is in some plays ( e.g. Privates On Parade with the peerless Denis Quilley ) or standup comedy, music hall. It strikes me that there should be more. I remember a Magic Flute at the Royal Opera House where Roddy Williams , as Papageno, asked plaintively about a reason for not ending it all. You can bet that the original Viennese audience would have shouted out something - depending on the quality of the singing. The silence just made it sadder.

[gradus]

Stuffed shirts not responding to Roddy is only to be expected at the ROH, especially from the corporate seats part of the audience ie mostly expensive stalls. Snooty attitudes were the norm but maybe they've changed since taking my trainers wearing children to the ROH and attracting unfavourable comments on their footwear.
Having said that a crying baby and live performance don't mix and parents should leave the auditorium straightaway as many do in my experience.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Stuffed shirts not responding to Roddy is only to be expected at the ROH, especially from the corporate seats part of the audience ie mostly expensive stalls. Snooty attitudes were the norm but maybe they've changed since taking my trainers wearing children to the ROH and attracting unfavourable comments on their footwear.
Having said that a crying baby and live performance don't mix and parents should leave the auditorium straightaway as many do in my experience.

In fact it was a Christmas performance and the auditorium had an unusually large number of families with children there. Last went there in 2019 and no one in the stalls gave a stuff what people were wearing.

[gradus]

I'm going back a little further than 2019 re the trainers and am glad attitudes have changed, but I think a Christmas audience failing to respond to a cue from a performer is odd even for the ROH, perhaps the German (?) threw them.

[Master Jacques]

Didn’t listening in silence , with lights dimmed, more or less come in with Wagner and the whole Bayreuth experience? All part of music becoming a rite or a substitute religion rather than an entertainment I guess. The only place I’ve ever seen audience interaction is in some plays ( e.g. Privates On Parade with the peerless Denis Quilley ) or standup comedy, music hall. It strikes me that there should be more. I remember a Magic Flute at the Royal Opera House where Roddy Williams , as Papageno, asked plaintively about a reason for not ending it all. You can bet that the original Viennese audience would have shouted out something - depending on the quality of the singing. The silence just made it sadder.

In large opera houses, that's quite right - although at smaller Baroque opera theatres (notably Drottningholm) the servants would snuff a good number of the candles while the overture was playing, before the curtain rose, so it wasn't entirely Wagner's invention. But the sepulchral 'temple of silence' in concert halls began (as a theatrical gambit) with Stokowski in America, before catching on in Europe. I've noticed that dimming the lights in concert halls - notably for Proms - seems to have been accentuated over the last year or so, now that the programmes don't bother with printing the texts any more.

Funny you should mention Peter Nichols, as I've just been writing about him; he wanted to boost audience interactivity, and several of his plays adopt those old music hall formats. But any time an audience laughs in the theatre, we have a live response off which the performers work.

For full on interactivity, I was astonished by Kabuki in Tokyo, where audience members repeat whole lines (if they like the way the actor has delivered them) as well as praising speeches, clapping entrances and offering the full gamut of reactions .... which of course used to be the norm here, too, in 16th c. - 19th c. theatre.

I've sympathy with those ROH audiences. No wonder they stay quiet, when being "asked the question" in German, a language few of them understand, and with surtitles pre-empting the singer by about 5 seconds. A great advert for opera in the original language ... NOT!!

[Master Jacques]

I'm going back a little further than 2019 re the trainers and am glad attitudes have changed, but I think a Christmas audience failing to respond to a cue from a performer is odd even for the ROH, perhaps the German (?) threw them.

I was once refused admission to the auditorium at Covent Garden (c.1980) for carrying a small leather handbag, containing water and other necessities. That was OK for a woman, it was explained, but not for a man. After sending the attendant off to fetch the manager, I went to my seat anyway, and that was the end of the matter. Things were different in them days...

[Ein Heldenleben]

I'm going back a little further than 2019 re the trainers and am glad attitudes have changed, but I think a Christmas audience failing to respond to a cue from a performer is odd even for the ROH, perhaps the German (?) threw them.

It was surtitled but Roddy’s plea was in German .
It took me a minute to come up Mach es Nicht by which time the moment had gone .
Also (spoiler) I knew that Papageno does not end up dying

[Ein Heldenleben]

I was once refused admission to the auditorium at Covent Garden (c.1980) for carrying a small leather handbag, containing water and other necessities. That was OK for a woman, it was explained, but not for a man. After sending the attendant off to fetch the manager, I went to my seat anyway, and that was the end of the matter. Things were different in them days...

This had me bursting out laughing. My first sight in the lifts at Broadcasting House that very same year - man with mauve corduroy shoulder bag. No one batted an eyelid.

[LHC]

I was once refused admission to the auditorium at Covent Garden (c.1980) for carrying a small leather handbag, containing water and other necessities. That was OK for a woman, it was explained, but not for a man. After sending the attendant off to fetch the manager, I went to my seat anyway, and that was the end of the matter. Things were different in them days...

When attending my first Mozart opera at the ROH (also in the 1980s), I was rather surprised to see another (male) audience member wearing a tight t shirt and black leather hot pants. This was admittedly in the amphitheatre rather than the stalls, but no one seemed to mind. I assumed after that experience that you could wear pretty much whatever you wanted.

At a recent visit to the ROH I saw someone in the stalls with a full beard, tattoos and earrings wearing a very bright floral dress, so things are certainly different now.

[HighlandDougie]

Mahler. Symphony No.3.

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Thomas Søndergård with The RSNO’s Youth Chorus and the Edinburgh Festival’s Chorus.

The Orchestra and the Choirs were absolutely at their peak last night with a radiant solo from Soprano Linda Watson.

The Mahler was preceded by a short work by James MacMillan in memory of a young player from the RSNO who died in tragic circumstances.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, someone obviously thought that in the name of inclusion, it would be a good idea to bring two people with profound learning difficulties to a sold out concert of one of the longest works in the repertoire. They shouted out during the poignant MacMillan work and then continued to call out during the quietest moments in the Mahler. It seems to have been recorded by the BBC but I doubt it’ll be suitable for broadcast.

What should the Hall’s management do? Had they been asked to leave I’m now sure it would have been reported widely in the media and a scandal would have ensued. However, 2,500 people were made to feel on edge as they waited for the next outburst.

It reminded me of an RSNO concert where someone thought that a babe in arms would enjoy an opportunity to hear Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. Of course, inevitably, the baby did what babies do and cried all the way through the slow movement. The baby’s creator seemed completely oblivious to the disruption it was causing and didn’t feel it was necessary to remove said baby. After the interval, the family unit was moved to the most expensive seats where it managed to make an unscored contribution to Beethoven’s Seventh.

I was there too - the people concerned were just behind me to the left. Although it was at times disconcerting, I did think that if you are going to bring people with, say, Tourette's Syndrome, to a concert, Mahler 3 has a lot of very loud music so the interjections were largely drowned out. However, as PG points out, there are also sections of rather quiet music so having, "Oh Mensch", interrupted did cause a certain amount of teeth grinding but, trying to put myself in their shoes, I think some degree of understanding and tolerance wasn't too much to ask of one. Asking them to leave would have been both insensitive and would then have caused a ruckus in the hall - I would certainly have walked out.

I didn't think that the performance was all that special - well, certainly not the first movement which fell into the trap of being episodic without there being a sense of the work proceeding as an overall arc. TS, good conductor that he certainly is, is no Haitink. But it was good to see and hear Scotland's home orchestral team in excellent form.