We don’t applaud; we’re too civilized

I had a terrific time last weekend in Second City, which is in fact my second favorite US city, Chicago. I got with my long-time buddy Malette for a few days of culture, conversation and comestibles.

We ate twice at the Italian Village, an old-school Italian restaurant in the Loop that stays open late. We had good, not great, grilled meats at the Honky Tonk BBQ restaurant in southwest Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, while listening to Scotch Hollow, an excellent acoustic roots band. We loved the brunch at Eggsperience Pancakes and Café in the River North neighborhood and we toured the Harold Washington library (right), mainly so I could show Malette its incredible and whimsical exterior.

We also visited the six-year old Driehaus Museum, a gilded age mansion decorated to the hilt – in a style far from mine, but impressive nonetheless.

But the high points of the trip were musical: Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s The Passenger at Lyric Opera and Sir András Schiff in recital at Symphony Hall.

The Wagner was splendid, as his operas always are, and at times boring, as his operas always are. (The second act includes a long argument on the definition of love; high on wordage, low on wattage). The overture and the Pilgrim’s Chorus more than made up for anything superfluous and the orchestra played flawlessly under the baton of Sir Andrew Davis.

The Passenger was likewise semi-successful. Fascinating staging and a compelling tale well sung didn't quite make up for a score that is too jaunty at times and too chaotic at others. Still, I was impressed with an opera that takes on the Holocaust; its emotional wallop is searing.

The highest of the high points, however, was the exquisite, beautiful-in-tone playing of Sir András in four piano sonatas, one each by Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert. As if that weren't enough he took four encores.

The audience sat enraptured, and, for the most part, stone silent – except for the woman behind us who rustled her program, opened and closed her purse, dropped things and otherwise made a nuisance of herself through most of the first half. Luckily she realized she didn't belong there and left at intermission.

To get to the subject line of this post, it has long struck me odd the rules classical music fans think they must obey. The oddest is the rule of silence. No matter how beautifully played a movement is, no matter how profoundly emotional its effects are, proper fans sit quietly at the end of each movement – no clapping aloud; no clapping allowed. Why is that? We don't abstain in any other art form. When Juan Diego Flórez hits those nine high C’s in La fille du regiment at the Met the music stops as we show our appreciation by wildly cheering. When a dancer executes a perfect grand jeté we shout, "Bravo!" and applaud. On Broadway we even stop the show when a beloved actor or actress simply makes an entrance.

Yet in the concert hall we are expected to sit ever so prim and proper and wait til the final chord has melted away before we react. It makes no sense.

The New York Philharmonic is beginning its search for a new music director to replace Alan Gilbert. The March 11 Times includes an article on just who or what the Philharmonic needs in a new MD. (Who Should Lead the New York Philharmonic? Five Critics Answer). Vivien Schweitzer speaks for me when she says

… ideally, the next maestro or maestra will continue to loosen stuffy concert protocol. Hopefully, by the end of the next music director’s tenure, classical music newbies who show enthusiasm by clapping at the end of a movement won’t be silenced by haughty stares.

Here! Here! -- he said silently.

Addendum, related to nothing above: I took the picture below on the train home from New York last night. I have seen plenty of selfish people before, but this couple takes the cake. They have commandeered EIGHT seats: the six they have spread their rude selves on and the two made unusable by the bag visible in the lower left. More proof of the selfish assholes so many Americans have become. Bring on the stand-up-for-consideration jihad!