Applause

[bluestateprommer]

On the age-old question of when to applaud, from this Front Row audio clip, Sakari Oramo seems a bit relaxed on the between movements question. However, he takes no prisoners on those who applaud the microsecond a work ends, using Sibelius 4 as an example:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07kr0qw

Of course, the better comparison would have been the moron who ruined the moment just after Haitink's 2016 Mahler 3 Prom. (Sarah Connolly wrote on the YT comments page: "Bernard winced.")

[Conchis]

I plead guilty to having once applauded after a couple of Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances, played as an overture. I thought they were done, but there was more to come.

[Bryn]

On the age-old question of when to applaud, from this Front Row audio clip, Sakari Oramo seems a bit relaxed on the between movements question. However, he takes no prisoners on those who applaud the microsecond a work ends, using Sibelius 4 as an example:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07kr0qw

Of course, the better comparison would have been the moron who ruined the moment just after Haitink's 2016 Mahler 3 Prom. (Sarah Connolly wrote on the YT comments page: "Bernard winced.")

Thanks for the link. A lot of useful guidance for the neophyte, I feel.

[ahinton]

At the risk of repeating myself (if indeed I am so doing), one answer for me is to write pieces in one movement only; Sibelius got it right in his last completed symphony, methinks. Also, in my piano quintet, I wrote a passage between the first two movements in which the sound never actually quite ceases and the string players then do some necessary tuning up over some quiet rumblings in the lowest register of the piano before proceedings resume - and then at the end of the second movement I have witten six bars of rests followed immediately by the start of the third movement with a view of keeping the momentu of the second movement going until the third movement bursts in. The onoly actual pause between movements is between the third and last movements. The usual arguments against applause between movements are the risk of disturbance of the concentration of other listeners and the performers...

[jayne lee wilson]

Reading Benjamin Korstvedt's study of Bruckner's 8th Symphony, I came across this, about Levi's 1885 Munich performance of the 7th Symphony:

"This concert was the greatest triumph Bruckner had yet experienced; he was called to the stage by applause after each movement and the work was received warmly by the Munich press".

It's all about context, occasion, aptness....
Haitink's Bruckner 7th last night needed, and inspired, a very different response......

[Richard Barrett]

This concert was the greatest triumph Bruckner had yet experienced; he was called to the stage by applause after each movement and the work was received warmly by the Munich press".

"The past is another country, they do things differently there." I don't much like it when fellow concertgoers break my concentration, whether it's by applauding between movements, or too soon after the music ends, or by coughing or talking or whatever, but I'm not so much of a misanthrope as to always demand that everyone behave the way I want them to; part of being at a concert is participating in a shared experience with one's fellow human beings, and if one doesn't like that one can always stay at home.

[ahinton]

"The past is another country, they do things differently there." I don't much like it when fellow concertgoers break my concentration, whether it's by applauding between movements, or too soon after the music ends, or by coughing or talking or whatever, but I'm not so much of a misanthrope as to always demand that everyone behave the way I want them to; part of being at a concert is participating in a shared experience with one's fellow human beings, and if one doesn't like that one can always stay at home.

I share not only your view on this but also your desire not to impose it on anyone else; after all, I cannot listen for anyone else...

[Serial_Apologist]

I share not only your view on this but also your desire not to impose it on anyone else; after all, I cannot listen for anyone else...

But what do people mean by "lending an ear"?

[ahinton]

But what do people mean by "lending an ear"?

I don't quite get that - and, after all, listening for someone else would be more akin to stealing one, wouldn't it?(!)...