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And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week
CMU Beef Of The Week #235: Classical Music v Its Audience
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 5 December 2014
Two years ago, Universal International CEO Max Hole said that classical music needed to overcome its “perceived elitism” and ditch its “unwritten etiquette” in order to convince more people to experience live performances. “I am worried that the very traditions and institutions that seek to celebrate, promote and preserve classical music are in danger of causing the genre great harm and hindering its growth”, he added.
This memo possibly never reached violinist Kyung-Wha Chung, who made her return to the London stage this week, after twelve years, at the Royal Festival Hall. After such a long absence, there was a lot of pressure on Chung, who in the 70s and 80s became one of the world’s most highly regarded violin soloists. And some reviewers at this week’s show noted a tension in the room from the very beginning of her opening piece, Mozart’s ‘Sonata In G’, which came to a head during a break in the performance.
Many in the audience took the silence as a cue to clear their throats, which seemingly annoyed Chung. And then, just as she was about to begin again, she apparently conferred with her piano accompanist Kevin Kenner before turning to the parents of a nearby child in the audience, who had also had a little cough, and telling them “maybe you should bring her back when she’s older”.
She then proceeded to stare them down occasionally during the remainder of the performance to ensure her point was properly made. So, good work making the world of classical music welcoming for all there.
“With one shrivelling put-down, a tetchy atmosphere turned toxic”, wrote Times critic Anna Picard. Though The Guardian’s Erica Jeal also noted: “Terrified into silence, the audience behaved impeccably during Prokofiev’s ‘Sonata No 1’, from the first movement’s muscular declamations to the silvery, shimmering melodies of the finale. I can’t remember the first half of a concert ever feeling this tense”.
So, everyone might have been having a shit time, but at least they were well behaved. Something some people thought was a reasonable pay-off, such as composer Sasha Valerie Millwood, who wrote in a comment on a Slipped Disc report on the incident: “I would like to publicly express my gratitude to Chang for drawing attention to this issue – poor audience behaviour has ruined a great many concerts in my experience, both on occasions where I was on stage and on occasions where I was in the audience”.
According to the BBC’s Magnus McGrandle, many of the other children in the audience responded by falling asleep as the concert continued. You don’t get a harsher reviewer than a child. However, this too can backfire. In October at a concert in Miami, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas asked the mother of a sleeping/restless child (depending on whose story you believe) to move/leave (ditto).
Anyway, back to the coughing. The Royal Festival Hall issued a statement about the incident, telling the BBC: “At this time of the year in particular, coughing isn’t uncommon at events at any venue. We don’t discourage parents or carers who wish to bring young people to an evening event and we do, where possible, check that they are aware of the nature of the event. We are aware that Kyung-Wha Chung is also a keen supporter of young people experiencing classical music”.
Whether or not Chung made a good a point by chastising the coughing girl’s parents is still a matter for debate, though this incident does suggest that classical music is still an artform struggling to make itself accessible. If people holding in their coughs until breaks in the music is the worst thing performers in the genre have to contend with, then their audiences are either overly polite or terrified of breaking one of those unwritten rules Hole noted.
Of course it’s a matter of balance. Outside of classical music, audiences could do with being a bit more considerate. I reckon I can count the number of non-classical gigs I’ve been to in the last five years where a sizeable number of people in the audience didn’t act like fucking dicks on one hand. Classical music shouldn’t be seeking to move to a domain where performers (and other audience members) have to learn to tolerate people talking and waving their phones around throughout the show. But that said, maybe let’s not make every (or any) child’s first experience of live music involve being told off for something pretty minor, eh?
