Zimerman walks off because "..You Tube is destroying Music"

[Thropplenoggin]

The South Bank Centre, where Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell room are, has always been good value, teams. Those seats are way up top and at the back, mind but with my dodgy ears that's no disadavantage

I was in those RFH balcony seats last night for my first visit thither with Mrs. T. We paid £15 per seat, but there were some further back for £12. Saw Pierre-Laurent Aimard and the Philharmonia Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi in Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, then Beethoven's Third. The sound was excellent, as was the view. And it was lovely and cool in there, too. The buzz around the Southbank Centre was superb - a great mixed population: old, young, skateboarders, city types...we had a G'n'T in the sun on the terrace. Can't wait to go back. Already looking at cheap seats for the Andris Nelsons Brahms cycle starting later this year and leading into next. I'll say more of last night's performance in the appropriate thread.

[ahinton]

All? The music would be missing a dimension if not performed. However, there is a difference between classical music and pop music here, where classical composers are normally acknowledged with any performance - and people tend to have favourites among the composers, with performers, live or recorded, as 'competitors' (against each other). Before the rise of the 'composer-performers' of the pop world, the performer was all and the composer songwriter unmentioned unless s/he was someone hugely well-known.

That's all very true, of course, but let's not forget the importance of the composer/performer in the "classical" world - an importance that was once pretty much taken for granted because the majority of composers were performers, whereas for quite a few decades now there's been a dividing line between the two activities, with the composer/performer being relegated to the status of an exception. Speaking of exceptions, it's the "mere" in SG's assertion to which I take the greatest exception; performers are the vitally important servants of the composer (provided that one interprets the term "servant" in a manner appropriate to the context), although would it not be the height (or rather nadir) of absurdity to accuse Rakhmaninov, or Bacewicz, or Stevenson, or McCabe, or Hough, of "self-serving" by reason of performing their own music?

[amateur51]

What a star he was indeed and how I miss him too! All of us do who were luck enough to have heard him, I'm sure. I think I already posted the Cherkassky Schumann mobile phone story but, if not, please let me know and I will gladly do it!...

Oh I don't know that one ahinton - please do tell

[An_Inspector_Calls]

You go to a concert. The concert is "given", one to one, by the artist(s) to you - to the audience members; the music moves between you - but there would be no event without those individuals in the audience, or those on the stage. The listener gives herself to the experience, and creates it by doing that, as much as the artist does, by playing.

Then - instead, you, the audience member, holds up an iPhone and records the performance. Then, there is no experience of the music - the recording device comes between performer and listener; a two-way baffle which destroys an experience, stops the movement of the music in the present moment.

Later, the attendee takes out the recording, watches it repeatedly with poor sound quality, cuddles it to herself, shows it off to her friends - I was there! All that is left is - a selfishness; a fake theft, a data retrieval with little relation to the actual event, which leaves the artist's actual sound and performance OUT of that high-definition picture; and leaves the human possibility of an experience, on the stage or in the audience, IN THE MOMENT - nowhere.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs hate it as much as Krystian Zimerman - why SHOULDN'T they hate it?

I don't understand your second paragraph at all. The recording device is no barrier at all. What is offensive about it is that it is intrusive to the enjoyment of the rest of the audience, If that's what you mean, OK. Suppose someone takes an audio recording at a concert using a button mike - is that a barrier to the enjoyment of others?

What's wrong with the person who has made a recording 'cuddling' it to herself. Why is that different to you getting out a CD and cuddling it to yourself? Perhaps she, like you, enjoys the performance?

[ahinton]

I don't understand your second paragraph at all. The recording device is no barrier at all. What is offensive about it is that it is intrusive to the enjoyment of the rest of the audience, If that's what you mean, OK. Suppose someone takes an audio recording at a concert using a button mike - is that a barrier to the enjoyment of others?

What's wrong with the person who has made a recording 'cuddling' it to herself. Why is that different to you getting out a CD and cuddling it to yourself? Perhaps she, like you, enjoys the performance?

I do not and would not presume to answer for Jayne here, but those who pay for concert tickets and attend concerts are entitled to do so with the minimum of distraction, which is often not the case when other audience members with cameras, iPhones and the like brandish them while trying to make videos of performances for which the have sought and received no one's permission. Yes, such illicit activity can be done with the minimum of distraction to others in the audience (although that's by no means usually the case when a video recording is being attempted), but that doesn't make it legally permissible or morally acceptable.

[Resurrection Man]

You go to a concert. The concert is "given", one to one, by the artist(s) to you - to the audience members; the music moves between you - but there would be no event without those individuals in the audience, or those on the stage. The listener gives herself to the experience, and creates it by doing that, as much as the artist does, by playing.

Then - instead, you, the audience member, holds up an iPhone and records the performance. Then, there is no experience of the music - the recording device comes between performer and listener; a two-way baffle which destroys an experience, stops the movement of the music in the present moment.

Later, the attendee takes out the recording, watches it repeatedly with poor sound quality, cuddles it to herself, shows it off to her friends - I was there! All that is left is - a selfishness; a fake theft, a data retrieval with little relation to the actual event, which leaves the artist's actual sound and performance OUT of that high-definition picture; and leaves the human possibility of an experience, on the stage or in the audience, IN THE MOMENT - nowhere.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs hate it as much as Krystian Zimerman - why SHOULDN'T they hate it?

Jayne, I know exactly what you mean and agree with you 100%. The recording device intrudes...simple as that.

[ahinton]

Jayne, I know exactly what you mean and agree with you 100%. The recording device intrudes...simple as that.

Exactly - although when an audio-only recording of a live performance is attempted somewhat more surreptitiously than is usually the case with video recording and the intrusiveness and the risk of distraction of artist/s and audience alike is that much less, the legality and morality of so doing is no less questionable.

[Serial_Apologist]

A one-time girlfriend of mine was regularly in the habit of recording concerts on an audio cassette recorder concealed in her handbag. At the conclusion of one such event the pianist, whom we knew well, came over, and we congratulated him on what had been a superb performance. "What a pity that no one was present to record it!" somebody said. The quality of the recordings always left much to be desired, as can be imagined; nevertheless my girlfriend and I looked at each other, and she sheepishly looked down at the ground.

[teamsaint]

one way out of this is to attend folk rock concerts.

Went to see the very excellent Oysterband last night, and not a camera/iphone/other implausibly complex device be seen. Anywhere.
Ok , the live show isn't "The Wall" or A NY Met "Don Giovanni", but you would have thought somebody would have wanted a little play with their toy.
perhaps folkies don't really do electro gizmos. Actually, that is a certainty.

Regardless of the moral rights and wrongs, somebody filming on a phone next to me at a classical concert would annoy me to a very great extent.