Last night, I went to the symphony here in Firenze. The National Symphony Orchestra of Salonica played Rachmaninov, including his second piano concerto played by an 85 year-old man! It was incredible watching him walk onstage as if he was going to die at any minute and then play such beautiful music with agility in his hands that is not common for people in their twenties!
But I couldn't help noticing the one thing that always bothers me when I'm at the symphony: people coughing, talking, and unwrapping in the middle of a piece. This is not me being a stuck-up pompous. It's a matter of common decency and respect. This man is standing in front of you, trying to share with you something that has taken him eighty years to perfect, and you can't wait until after the performance to tell your friend whatever it is that seems so important at the time. Nevermind that you paid money to hear it; it's still a gift that you are receiving and you're spitting back in his face. And people, without the slightest concern for those surrounding them, can't so much as cover their mouths when they cough or when they clear their throats for, like, honestly, ten seconds. I have even seen someone unwrapping a Twix bar in the middle of a symphony, which was being done so slowly to avoid making a lot of noise that it ended up drowning out the music of an entire orchestra for a ridiculous 4 minutes!
I don't believe that I am some super-human who has such incredible and unheardof talents that include . . . sitting still for an hour. It is a matter of appreciation and self-appreciation. And it's not just here in Europe, or in Israel (don't even talk to me about Israel), or even Chicago. I have come to realize that the world, all of us, cannot simply appreciate a concert the way it was meant to be appreciated. It's not this country or that, it's this period in history. Back 200 years ago, people didn't have radios or recordings of their favorite pieces. No. If one wanted to hear music, he would have to wait until the time written on his tickets. Then, he would go to hear the orchestra play a piece that he had never heard before and he would have to walk home saying to himself: I will never hear that beautiful piece ever again. People would line up to hear Beethoven's Fifth without even knowing what it sounded like, yet knowing that it was extremely famous. Nowadays, practically anyone in the world will recognize Beethoven's Fifth from the first measure on a digital recording.
But the one thing that impressed me in all of this was that the performers just continued as if all were quiet. I want to look at it this way: In every symphony, whenever your music is playing, there will always be those who cough through your entire piece. There will always be people who want you to fail or try to beat you. The question is if you are strong enough to continue playing through to the end.
Maybe those people are just so moved by the music, by what's happening in front of them, that they feel the need to be an active part of it . . . not just a spectator. They want to make sound of their own. Their own music. They need to participate because they do appreciate how incredible is this thing they are witnessing. They can't sit still because they feel left out, underprivileged that they cannot make the same beauty. I suppose that's all of us. We can't just sit there as the music passes us by; we have to make our own symphony to share with the world.
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The thing is.....I've often thought that the performer is really playing for himself, in his own world, with himself........BUT I have been at a concert where Baremboin stopped the orchestra until everyone had finished coughing before he continued.....hmmm, I'll have to think about it.
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