Should we save our concert clapping to the end? (From The Oxford Times)

Should we save our concert clapping to the end?

2:58pm Wednesday 28th July 2010 in

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I knew what was coming. As I heard the thunderous applause between the movements of Serge Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2, as performed at last week’s Prom by the brilliant young Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski (pictured), I told my dinner guest: “There will be a fuss about that.”

And there was. It began in that traditional place for fusses to start: on the letters page of The Times. An harrumphing correspondent noted the outrageous breach of convention, the ill-mannered interruption to the flow of the work, the deleterious influence of Classic FM on concert audiences through its ‘music in gobbets’ approach.

The fuss ended there, too, pretty sharply, with a number of letters over the next few days pointing out, variously, that the convention was a comparatively modern one, that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. was a glutton for audience approval during any break, and that concerto performers used always to be applauded at the end of the first movement to help set them up for the challenges to come.

The first point was underlined yesterday when A.R.F. Carter, of Sittingbourne, Kent, wrote to tell Times readers of Edward Elgar’s dismay when the audience’s calls for him to appear between movements of his First Symphony were not repeated at the premiere of his Second. “What’s the matter with them, Billy?” he asked the leader of the orchestra. “They sit there like a lot of stuffed pigs.”

A point not so far made in the correspondence, I think, is that the ‘no applause’ ukase delights the sort of people who like to catch others out in breaking a ‘rule’. They are the same kind I mentioned recently — prompting lots of warmly expressed acknowledgments of recognition from readers (thank you!) — who hope I won’t ring my bicycle bell when I am riding up the towpath behind them thereby presenting them with the chance to tick me off. It is something — as W.H. Auden wrote in another context — “for nasty people to be nasty about”.

Nor has anyone observed thus far that the no-applause rule is disregarded where opera is concerned. Skilful handling of a vocal or orchestral set piece is almost always followed by clapping and sometimes cheers, with no regard here for the obvious interruption to the dramatic momentum. These days, though, we do draw the line at calling on the singers to reprise their choicest arias.

In the 19th century, before everybody got so po-faced about the whole business of opera, the house lights used to be kept on throughout the performance. Activity on the stage and the sounds produced by the orchestra at work in the pit beneath were considered merely a pleasant, and occasionally diverting, accompaniment to the social event in progress.

An exception always came — and still does — with the works of Richard Wagner. Attendance at one of his operas is thought by many to be as much an act of worship as a means of providing oneself with entertainment, an attitude which owes much to the composer’s own reverence towards his works: Parsifal, for instance, is styled a Stage Dedication Festival Play (Bühnenweihfestspiel).

The stage in question, of course, was that at Bayreuth, where very strict standards of behaviour are still expected from patrons lucky enough to secure tickets for performances there.

We shared a box with one such last Saturday night for the first performance of Longborough Festival Opera’s new production of Die Valküre (which, incidentally, as a seasoned attender of Ring cycles, he judged a fine account of the work, as did other Bayreuth regulars I spoke to).

He pointed out how one has to suffer for one’s art, with the festival theatre now pretty uncomfortable by modern standards, especially when you are sitting there for very long periods, as is usually the case.

“It’s very hot sometimes, but you are not allowed to take your jacket off. I broke the rule on one visit though, because I couldn’t bear it any longer. I got a lot of funny looks, but I wasn’t ordered to put it on again.”

What might have happened in similar circumstances, I wonder, in the days when Winifred Wagner held sway. She would probably have asked her pal Adolf Hitler to have him shot.

Even Proms inter-movement clappers haven’t been threatened with that — yet.