Four years ago today, TG and I were married in the garden at Disney Hall in downtown Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Tonight, we had a marvelous dinner, and then went to the hall for a LA Philharmonic concert (we go about once a month).<\/p>\n
It was a great concert; Rachmaninoff and Shostakovitch (his “Leningrad” concerto) immaculately and passionately performed. (Interesting thought about Shostakovitch and morally bent people doing great work – think Heidegger. And Rachmaninoff died about five blocks from where I grew up.)<\/p>\n
But I want to take a moment while TG cleans up to rant. About the audience.Look, it’s possible that many people there have never been to a classical concert – or any live performance before. But it’s unlikely.<\/p>\n
So it’s obvious that no one showed them the rules.<\/p>\n
I’m happy to help.<\/p>\n
1) No talking. Ever. I don’t care if your pet ferret leaps out of your handbag and starts gnawing its way to your vitals – sit there and die in silence like a music fan. Tonight some woman started narrating the piano solo in the Rachmaninoff piece. I came as close as I’ve ever been to beating down an old lady. And I wouldn’t have felt bad about it if I had…<\/p>\n
2) There is no way it takes you a minute and 45 seconds to unwrap your throat lozenge from the crinkly plastic wrapper. I don’t care if you can only use one hand. Do it quickly and quietly. Better still, here’s a trick – unwrap three or four before the damn performance starts.<\/p>\n
3) Don’t tap your ***ing feet. No, you’re not a percussionist, nor are you Savion Glover – and if you were, I’d still be pissed because it wasn’t a Savion Glover concert. It sounded like the freaking Rockettes tapdancing their way through the music tonight.<\/p>\n
4) Classical music pieces are often made up of sections, called ‘movements’. Don’t clap between them. If you’re not sure whether to clap or not, don’t until 3\/4 of the audience is clapping (in LA, if you set the bar at 1\/2, people will clap all the damn time). It’s not that hard; look in the program and see how many movements there are in the work being played. Clap then that number of pauses plus one comes along. Use rubber bands like football refs do if you need to. Just don’t clap between movements, OK?<\/p>\n
You paid a lot of money for that seat and the experience of listening to the music. You didn’t pay to do audience participation. And I didn’t pay to listen to you. So sit still<\/b> and listen<\/b>, mmmkay?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Four years ago today, TG and I were married in the garden at Disney Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Tonight, we had a marvelous dinner, and then went to the hall for a LA Philharmonic concert (we go about once a month). It was a great concert; Rachmaninoff and Shostakovitch (his “Leningrad” concerto) immaculately and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}