Soloist in the audience?

[DracoM]

The increase in standing ovations for performances is I think partly as a result of TV, where you see pathetic standing ovations every 5 minutes on things like the X factor, which in that programmes case is probably for someone managing to sing a note in tune or for one of the guest 'artists' managing to 'lip-sync' a whole phrase correctly.

I fear it is an American habit.

One wonderful antidote to this was on a recent visit with some friends to Berlin to hear Tristan, we were collectively and instinctively underwhelemed by the Isolde. Without realising it we were sitting pretty well adjacent to a phalanx of an American tour and at the curtain, all around us after about three calls rose to applaud, leaving a small line of Brits resolutely not rising and as I looked down the line, not applauding either, and staring at the standers. One said to a friend 'didn't you like it?' and when friend said a very decided 'no', they turned to the stage and applauded even more wildly.

[LHC]

American friends who have attended concerts in London and Birmingham are both surprised and delighted that British audiences often don't give standing ovations but instead clap enthusiastically from a sedentary position.They tell me that standing ovations are de rigeur in the USA and they find it very tedious

Indeed, as confirmed in this NY Times article about a 10 day stay in London:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/london-journal-no-standing-please-were-british/

As the reviewer implies, every performance at the Metropolitan Opera, no matter how mediocre, receives a standing ovation (it's almost as if the audience needs to persuade themselves that their tickets were worth the price they paid).

Thankfully, such ovations are still pretty rare in the UK and, in over 30 years of attending performances at Covent Garden, I have only seen a handful of standing ovations. Ironically, one of those was at a later performance of Don Giovanni with Netrebko and Schrott than the one referred to in the article.

[kernelbogey]

I fear it is an American habit.

Does anyone know when it started - there or here? (I'm sitting down to type this.)

[mangerton]

I fear it is an American habit.

Do they make that strange whooping noise too?

[mercia]

I attended a memorial concert for Britten at the Festival Hall (1977?), at which Pears sang the Serenade, at the end of which I thought it appropriate to stand and applaud but no one else did ................. what a fool I felt .............

[moeranbiogman]

Shades of Kreisler playing in the violin section of Barbirolli's orchestra - and Barbirolli playing amongst the Halle cellos in a concert that VW was conducting!

[Chris Newman]

I have had the pleasure of Moira Lympany coming to sit next to me in the audience after she had played the Emperor Concerto. At Redhill, I heard Alfredo Campoli play Dvorak's Violin Concerto with an amateur orchestra where he joined the second violins in the symphony after the interval. Anthony Pini did the same in the cellists after playing the Schumann concerto in Horsham as did Georg Pauk in Salisbury after Beethoven's VC.

[davehsug]

Not as unusual as I thought then. On the subject of standing ovations, as a relatively recent convert to live performances, I have been surprised that they don't happen. I would be quite willing to join in on occasion, but it seems that's not what we do. The Victoria Hall audiences, stamp their feet on the wooden floors to show extra appreciation, which is a nice touch!

[Chris Newman]

Standing ovations. Ummmm! British audiences are a very reticent lot even about cheering and calling "Brava/Bravo or Bravi". You will find that big cities like London are more open-hearted. In little Salisbury, where I live, most major concerts are in the Cathedral and I can only think of about a few standing ovations in thirty years: Giulini and Bruckner's Eighth SYmphony, Georg Pauk and Beethoven VC, Janet Baker or Ed Gardner and The LPO Dream of Gerontius. Sometimes I want to scream at the audiences. "Where is your appreciation? That was something special, you stuffed dummies!" You can understand Elgar's anger with British audiences.

Loud applause with lots of smiles and wagging heads means the performance was exceptional in Britain. We mean well, but we Brits are very weak at showing gratitude. Having said that last week at the Wiltshire Music Centre there were huge cheers at the City of London Sinfonia concert for Shostakovich's Piano and Trumpet Concerto which pleased me.

I find it the same at the West End though occasionally at the Proms or an opera house the audience will go wild. Then they stamp.

[DracoM]

Do they make that strange whooping noise too?

Oh dear, alas, on this occasion they did. At which point even the German audience looked at each other and tutted. The Americans looked round to find that they almost alone were among some fifty-hundred or so standing and the other 2000+ not.

[Richard Tarleton]

John Williams came to sit nearby after playing the Rodrigo with Previn. He sat next to Mia Farrow.

[Flosshilde]

In my view, standing ovations should be reserved for the genuinely exceptional. I find it annoying if some people in front of me stand up, thereby obscuring my view. Sometimes I have stood up in these circumstances just in order to be able to see what is happening. Usually I remain resolutely seated.

Hmm - perhaps you were the 'gentleman' behind me in Edinburgh who shook the back of my seat when I stood to applaud (as did a large part of the audience - very unusual for Edinburgh)at about the third curtain call at the end of SO's Gotterdammerung. I wouldn't have thought he objected to not seeing the cast - he'd had a perfectly good view during the previous curtain calls; perhaps he just thought the production & performance weren't exceptional & my enthusiasm wasn't appropriate?

[bluestateprommer]

I've seen artists like Julia Fischer, Henning Kraggerud, and Leonidas Kavakos take a spot in the hall after playing a concerto in the 1st half. Once, I saw Hilary Hahn take a seat among the back desks of the violins for Brahms' 1 (symphony, that is, not piano concerto or serenade). I remember reading once that Jean-Efflam Bavouzet likes to take a seat in the hall for the 2nd half of a concert where he was soloist in the 1st half.

[jayne lee wilson]

Amazing what you can start with a stray remark, eh?
Never knew standing ovations could be controversial...

Anyway. In Liverpool I've only ever experienced it after Mahler symphonies, and it really is heartfelt; when we grow fond of a conductor, as with Pesek, now with Petrenko, we show it after truly great events. I stood after a Nielsen 4th with Dausgaard - I HAD to release the tension! - but only 3 or 4 others did, not that it bothered me, the freedom of movement is one reason I choose a back row circle seat if I can, and I'll book months in advance to get it too. But the original reason for that was long legs.

Sorry, what was this thread about again?

[David Underdown]

Well having recently attended four concerts, one opera and one Broadway show in the US (two concerts in Boston, the rest in NYC), it certainly felt that the four of us in my group were the only ones remaining in our seats at the end (and even at the interval, following a distinctly average Dvorak cello from Yo Yo Ma). I have heard that Dutch audiences are also very prone to this