Live concert Friday 5th Oct from the Usher Hall,Edinburgh

[salymap]

Thank you Ams. One step at a time

Yes, very glad you enjoyed it. So far I've caught up with the violin concerto which was lovely. Long intricate symphonies are beyond me now as I have bad tinnitus. {except for ones I already know by heart, as it were].

[jayne lee wilson]

I (almost) daren't ask what you think of people who follow the score during a concert.

Oh no, that's totally different - as long as you're good at it! If I try to follow a score while listening I won't enjoy either....

Dear fhg, YOU may be best rewarded with a deliberate and concentrated attention I couldn't even attempt, but submitting to the music, letting it come on to you, looking away from it and then being surprised, has its own emotional rewards. It's something I do if I'm not getting involved. It's funny that you say I should "leave listeners alone" to enjoy it in their own way, I'm not grabbing at their shoulders!

No, I just think it's good to challenge (passively smiling...) idee recus of "what we do when we listen"... I do notice that many who "try to follow the music in the programme" are among the more restless of attendees, and often think they might find more response if they switched off this diverted, conscious attention and just "let it happen". Learn all you can before (perhaps) and certainly after, but let your brain find those "shapes in the air" instinctively once they move towards you.

I find a live concert very different from home listening - the latter is "just the music" and makes me more aware of my imperfect concentration or knowledge of the piece - but there are fewer distractions; at a concert I'm in the middle of a visual, spatial and sonic event, a phenomenon which can be greater, or very much less (if it disappoints), than pure attention or response to a stereo recording.

I'm always amazed at a spontaneous reaction too - whilst listening to the radio, or watching a film, not knowing which music might come next...
So at a concert, just submitting, letting it happen, can give you a marvellous, unsoughtafter thrill - as happened last week at the RLPO, when the big tune in the finale of Sibelius 1st utterly overwhelmed me, shocked, shaking and crying!
How deliciously paradoxical, to find such spontaneity of response, in the middle of a familiar piece that I had chosen to attend....

(This was with Pietari Inkinen - see "Your last concert" thread)

[Simon B]

This seems a classic case of the familiar phenomenon of a concert which came across very differently live compared with the broadcast.

A few days escape to the wilds of Wester Ross prior to starting my next contract afforded a rare chance for me to hear the RSNO live by diverting via Edinburgh en route South to Glasgow on Friday evening. The front of the (acoustically excellent) upper circle of the Usher Hall also afforded a rare chance for me to experience vertigo! It really is quite startlingly vertiginous up there, especially if you're over 6 foot with a high centre of gravity and the conviction that loss of balance would probably end with a fatal plunge over the balustrade down to the grand circle, but I digress...

The violin concerto was ok up to a point, but my impression at the time was that the soloist was trying to set a world record for the fastest anyone had ever played the last movement - and just failing. Just failing, that is, to play all the notes - it certainly seemed to pass on the speed front. Also his tone (on a Strad) seemed a bit scratchy and forced. However, neither of these aspects seem apparent listening again on the iplayer. I suspect the resonant and bright acoustic were both blurring the fastest passages and emphasising the brighter end of the violin's tone...

In the Shostakovich what sounds, well, slow and ponderous on the iplayer was sheer tension live. My attention was gripped almost throughout, despite the best attempts of the coughers and droppers (clearly Edinburghers include a generous proportion of these just like audiences everywhere it seems) to trash the sustained icy quietness at the beginning.

The outbursts of orchestral rage should leave you reeling, and indeed did live, but sound rather contained and a bit polite on the broadcast. This isn't helped by what sounds to me like some serious dynamic range manipulation. E.g. at the sudden cessation of the brutal fff percussion ostinato of the massacre leaving just a recap of icy ppp harp/celeste/violins of the opening, the contrast was startling live but doesn't seem all that great on the broadcast.

Overall, there was a coherence and inevitability to a whole which didn't seem to go on anywhere near as long as it actually did - the reverse seems true on the iplayer!

[Flosshilde]

The front of the (acoustically excellent) upper circle of the Usher Hall also afforded a rare chance for me to experience vertigo! It really is quite startlingly vertiginous up there, especially if you're over 6 foot with a high centre of gravity and the conviction that loss of balance would probably end with a fatal plunge over the balustrade down to the grand circle, but I digress...

To add to the digression - it's also excruciatingly cramped if you are over 6ft - the person in front of you is at risk of banging their head on your knees!

[Simon B]

To add to the digression - it's also excruciatingly cramped if you are over 6ft - the person in front of you is at risk of banging their head on your knees!

Indeed, I was intermittently brushing the right shoulder of the bloke in front of me (I was 2nd row) with my knee, despite my best attempts to avoid it. I've been up there before but on the side rather than the middle and didn't find it anywhere near as noticeably vertical for some reason. I'm not sure whether my legs were shaking as I tried to leave on Friday due to the bell-driven icy fury of the DSCH 11 coda or the fear of sudden gravity-induced death!

To digress from the digression, for crampedness the Usher Hall upper circle is nothing. Have you ever experienced the upper circle in the London Coliseum? If you're over 6', my advice is not to bother! I went to Martinu's Julietta there 2 weeks ago and just about managed to enjoy the show despite the pain of my knees being jammed against the back of the seat in front for 3+ hours. Somehow I previously survived Parsifal and Der Rosenkavalier up there - maybe I've got even taller.

To digress^3 - worst of all is the amphitheatre at Covent Garden. I went all through the online booking hostilities for the ongoing ROH Ring cycles - and got allocated a 2nd row almost centre amphi seat. The alternative "cheap" (cough) seats on the side balconies etc (from which you can only see 50%-70% of the stage but can at least physically get into the space allocated to the loose seats) I normally opt for weren't available. With great reluctance I let the amphi seat go and resigned myself to not seeing the Ring. Previous experience (Die Tote Stadt) taught me that the ridiculously cramped amphi seating would be painful beyond endurance over Wagnerian timescales however much I'd have liked to finally see a staged Ring...

[Flosshilde]

The centre stalls circle at Covent Garden are also rather cramped - surprisingly so for seats that cost so much (but not for me on the one time I've sat there - I got it free ). The Usher stalls are luxurious - one can really stretch out in them.