The etiquette and responsibilities of concert audiences

Earlier this week, at a solo piano recital in the Wigmore Hall, London, a man near to where I was seated started complaining in the interval about how poor he thought the performer was. His statements were apparently unsolicited. The people seated either side of him disagreed with his view, and asked him to be more specific. This occurred as people were returning to their seats at the end of the interval, and he could be heard several rows away.

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Music performance and morphic resonance

Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance posits the existence (in some metaphysical or conceptual sense) of morphic forms which arise when living beings act in the world. In this theory, these forms are strengthened with each repetition of the action, and create a force field (a morphic field) which can be drawn upon by subsequent beings repeating the same act. The theory predicts that doing the same thing should become easier over time, even when the entities doing the acting are different, in different locations or not not even alive at the same time. Morphic resonance, if it exists (whatever that may mean) is a form of action at a distance and action through time. I have been fascinated by this theory since first reading Sheldrake’s book about it 36 years ago.

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Concert Concat 2024

This post is one in a sequence which lists (mostly) live music I have heard, as best as memory allows. I write to have a record of my musical experiences and these entries are intended as postcards from me to my future self. All opinions are personal, although music historians from the 25th Century may find some of them of interest.

Other posts in this collection can be found here. The most recent prior post in this sequence is here.

  • Vikungur Ólafsson with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on Wednesday 6 November 2024, playing Brahms’ First Piano Concerto.

    This was superb performance to an almost full hall, and I had a very good seat in the rear stalls with a direct line of sight to the keyboard. It was amazing to hear how softly Mr Ólafsson played, especially in the second movement, with 2000 or so people sitting immensely quietly to hear him. This Concerto is growing on me, although I still consider Brahms’ music to be long-winded (he is the musical equivalent of Henry James), and the second movement in particular I find to be too long. I could not stay for the second half, which included a new piece by Freya Waley-Cohen and Bartok’s The Miraculous Mandarin Suite.

  • Jan Liebermann on the organ of the Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, London on Saturday 26 October 2024. The programme was (in a slight change from the printed list):
    • JS Bach: Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564
    • Jean Langlais (1907-1991): III Chant de paix from Neuf Pieces
    • Alfred Hollins (1865-1942): Concert Overture No. 2 in C minor
    • Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-18760: Larghetto in F sharp minor
    • Zsolt Gardonyi (born 1946): Hommage a Marcel Dupre
    • Marcel Dupre (1886-1971): Trois Preludes et Fugues Op. 7 (No 1 in B major, No 2 in F minor and No. 3 in G minor)

    This was an outstanding afternoon recital by a young German organist to an audience of about 60 people. I appreciated the three brief introductions to the works played given by Mr Liebermann. Most of the audience were seated downstairs, so it was very good that his performance was relayed live from cameras in the organ loft to three large video screens at the front of the church. It is a wonder of our particular era – still working with imperfect technology – that even across a distance of only a few metres, the sound of the organ reached us before the video images did, with a delay of about half a second. Thus, for instance, it took some getting used to hearing a sudden loud chord and then seeing Mr Liebermann’s hands play it. For this reason, I stopped watching the video screens after a while.

    All the works were played superbly, with great technical facility and musicality, and with a large variety of organ sounds and effects. Mr Liebermann appeared to know this particular organ well. I especially liked the Concert Overture by Alfred Hollins. The most exciting work he performed was in fact the encore, Bach’s Badinerie from Orchestral Suite No 2 in B minor, BWV 1067, in an arrangement for organ, I think by Jean Guillot (1930-2019). The concert was worth attending for this one joyful and virtuosic work alone. Congratulations to Mr Liebermann for bringing it so well to life.

    Mr Liebermann has posted a clip of himself playing the Badinerie (on the Father Willis organ of Salisbury Cathedral) on IG, here. His cross-over footwork is a marvel to behold.

    This recital reminded me of hearing another superb young organist, Cameron Carpenter, once in Cottonopolis.

  • Leonard Bernstein’s two operas, Trouble in Tahiti (1952) and A Quiet Place (1983), performed by the Royal Ballet and Opera Company at the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera, Covent Garden London, on 22 October 2024.

    The RBO’s website says these performances are sold out (and has said so for months), but I had no trouble getting a ticket last week, and there were dozens of empty seats on the evening I attended. This was an outstanding performance of these two operas, with very good singing and acting. The orchestra performance was also superb, and it was nice to able to see four of the percussionists who were at stalls level (not in the orchestra pit). The music was recognizably Bernstein’s and, particularly for the second opera, it sounded repeatedly as if it was about to break into a number from West Side Story. Despite being recognizably Bernstein’s, the music isn’t very good.

    Before the start, an American patron in the foyer told me that these two operas were very dark. I did not think them dark, so much as overly melodramatic and anguished. So much angst, so little plot. And so much time – the second opera could have been cut in half with no loss of anything – not message, nor meaning, nor musical pleasure. How could the composer of the taut West Side Story also write such never-ending meanderings? I am pleased that I heard these two operas, but I would not choose to hear them again.

    And, forty years on from its composition, I wonder what Bernstein was trying to say with his quotation of Henry Mancini’s Baby Elephant Walk, played by layered strings? What will anyone think in 100 years, when even we, today, don’t get it?

  • Professor Dmitri Alexeev, in a late afternoon recital for the Chopin Society, at Westminster Cathedral Hall, London on 20 October 2024. The program:
    • Rachmaninoff: Sonata No 1 in D minor, Op. 28
    • INTERVAL

    • Chopin: Three Noocturnes
    • Chopin: Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat minor, Op. 51
    • Chopin: Three Nouvelle Etudes
    • Chopin: Five Polish Songs (arranged by Liszt)

    Mr Alexeev’s performance was superb, and I was indeed fortunate to hear it. A portrait of Chopin was placed behind the piano, as befits a concert for the Chopin Society. The Rachmaninoff Sonata was new to me, and apparently the composer had initially begun the work inspired by the legend of Faust. This idea was still evident in the final work, which had a very strong intellectual energy, with musical ideas from one movement returning and being developed in later movements. Who could have imagined that ordinary scales could sound demonic, as they did here? This Sonata is an intellectual tour de force and Mr Alexeev’s playing made the ideas and their development clear.

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Loud Living in Cambridge

I was most fortunate this week to hear Jan Lisiecki in an outstanding recital at the West Road Concert Hall, Department of Music, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, on 26 February 2024, in a concert sponsored by Camerata Musica Cambridge. West Road Hall is a fine modern hall with very nice acoustics, and was fully packed. The hall management turned off the lights over the audience (as in a theatre), which should happen more often. Perhaps that darkness helped create the atmosphere of great seriousness this performance had. I later learnt that this recital was the twelfth time in the series that Mr Lisiecki had played the Preludes program.

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Vale: Peter Schickele (1935-2024)

The composer and musician Peter Schickele, manager of that lesser-known last son of JS Bach, PDQ Bach, has just died. He was heavily influenced by Spike Jones, whose music was a strong presence in my household growing up. With the death last year of Barry Humphries, it feels like the 1950s may now just have ended.

From his obituary in The New York Times, Mr Schickele is quoted as having said in an interview with the Times in 2015:

“Years ago I used to watch Victor Borge, still concertizing in his 80s. And it never occurred to me that I would do the same. I’m amazed that P.D.Q. has gone on for 50 years.

It just goes to show: Some people never learn.”

Transcendent music

Some years ago, I compiled a list of purposes that may motivate composers, performers or listeners of music, under the heading What is music for?

An objective that may motivate many performers is that of reaching a transcendent state, as the Russian-Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg, describes here. His blog post was written after he had performed all five Beethoven Piano Concertos with the Brussels Philharmonic (under Thierry Fischer) across three evenings, in February 2020 (blog entry of 18 February 2020):

The high point for me was No. 4, during which I experienced something which until now I’ve only felt while playing Russian music: a kind of floating, when your brain disengages or splits in two. One (small) part is alert and following the performance, and perhaps directs the musical flow a little bit, the other (much larger) part is completely sunk into the music, experiencing it in a kind of visceral, instinctive way which precludes logical thinking and seems wired directly to your deepest feelings, without any buffers or defenses. After that concerto I was drained, bewildered, exhilarated – a complete mess. But what an unforgettable night.”

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Concert Concat 2

This post is one in a sequence which lists live music I have heard, as best my memory allows, from the Pandemic onwards. I will update this as time permits. In some cases, I am also motivated to write about what I heard.

Other posts in this collection can be found here.

  • Ariel Lanyi – piano recital at the Wigmore Hall, London, 27 December 2023. The program was:
    • Beethoven: Sonata #2 in A, Op 2 No 2 (1794-5)
    • Franck: Prelude, Aria et Final (1887)
    • R. Schumann: Etudes Symphoniques Op 13 (with posthumous etudes) (1834-7)

    A very refined performance to a house about 3/4 full. Many people seemed to know each other. I was not able to stay for the Schumann.

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Concert Halls

Herewith a list of concert halls and music performance venues in which I have been fortunate to experience musical performances (excluding working Churches).

  • The Barbican Concert Hall, London
  • Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
  • Brisbane City Hall, Brisbane
  • Cadogan Hall, London
  • Casino Civic Hall, Casino, NSW
  • City Recital Hall, Sydney
  • Performance Space, College Building, City University of London, UK
  • Sir John Clancy Auditorium, University of New South Wales, Sydney
  • Ballroom, Corinthia Hotel, London
  • Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
  • English National Opera, Covent Garden, London
  • Salle de Flagey, Brussels
  • Salle Gaveau, Paris
  • Hamburgische Staatsoper, Hamburg
  • Hamer Concert Hall, Melbourne
  • Ipswich Civic Hall, Ipswich, Queensland
  • King’s Place, London
  • Leggate Theatre, University of Liverpool, Liverpool
  • Leighton House, Holland Park, London
  • Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, London
  • City Hall, Lismore, NSW
  • Llewellyn Hall, Canberra School of Music, Canberra, ACT
  • LSO St Luke’s, London
  • Auditorium, Maison de la Radio et de la Musique, Paris
  • Matthäuskirche, Munich, Germany
  • Melba Hall, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, Melbourne
  • Milton Court Concert Hall, Guildhall School of Music, London
  • Old Museum Concert Hall, Brisbane
  • Studio 1, Old Museum Building, Brisbane
  • Auditorium, St Joseph’s Nudgee College, Nudgee, Brisbane
  • Pamoja Concert Hall, Sevenoaks School, Sevenoaks, Kent UK
  • Purcell Room, South Bank Centre, London
  • Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre, London
  • Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Southbank, Brisbane
  • Regent Hall (Salvation Army Centre), Oxford Street, London
  • Duke’s Hall, Royal Academy of Music, London
  • Royal Albert Hall, London
  • Elgar Room, Royal Albert Hall, London
  • Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, Royal College of Music, London
  • Carne Room (aka East Parry Room), Royal College of Music, London
  • Performance Hall, Royal College of Music, London
  • Royal Festival Hall, South Bank Centre, London
  • Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool
  • Concert Hall, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester
  • Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London
  • Golden Concert Room, St George’s Hall, Liverpool
  • Recital Hall, Seoul Arts Centre, Seoul
  • Seymour Centre, University of Sydney, Sydney
  • State Theatre, Sydney
  • Steinway Hall, London
  • Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
  • Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House
  • Sydney Town Hall, Sydney
  • Tanglewood, MA
  • Theatre des Champs Elysees, Paris
  • Tyalgum Literary Institute Hall, Tyalgum, NSW
  • Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Sydney
  • Victoria Hall, Hanley, UK
  • West Road Concert Hall, Department of Music, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
  • Westminster Cathedral Hall, London
  • Wigmore Hall, London

Recent Reading 18: Copeland Family Edition

The latest in a sequence of lists of recently-read books, listed in reverse chronological order. In this edition, the books include several written by Miles Copeland II and his sons, Miles III, Ian and Stewart Copeland, or about them.

  • Ian Copeland [1999]: Wild Thing: The Backstage – on the Road -in the Studio – Off the Charts: Memoirs of Ian Copeland. Simon and Schuster.
  • Miles Copeland II [1989]: The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA’s Original Political Operative. Aurum Press. A well-written and fascinating, but often unreliable, account of Miles Copeland’s life. I admire the great intellectual heft and subtlety of political analysis Copeland demonstrates, something he shared with his contemporaries among the founders of CIA. These features stands in great contrast to the simple-minded nature of many of the attacks on intelligence, both from the State Department and the Pentagon in the 1950s, and from the left in the years since.

    It is interesting that a book published in 1989, in a chapter about his work in the US intelligence community in the late 1940s, argues that the main thrust of Soviet aggression towards the West was expected even then by Copeland and some of his intelligence community colleagues to be disinformation campaigns (dezinformatzia) directed against the West (page 74).

    It was unexpected but very heartening to see how much he despised the Moral Re-Armament (MRA) movement.

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