oboeinsight

All the stuff I’ve written about “it’s okay to applaud between movements”? Well, I guess I lied!

I’m just home from a San Francisco Symphony chamber music concert with Yuja Wang. The first half of the program was the Dvorak Piano Quintet, Opus 81, and the second was the Brahms Piano Quintet, Opus 34. The audience applauded between each movement. Not just ones that are so exciting they couldn’t help themselves, but every single movement. It bugged me. It was especially annoying that some had to applaud even before the final notes had sounded fully some of the time. Is this just me being a snob? Is this just me being an old lady? I wonder.

The performances themselves were quite enjoyable. There were some clothing (costume?) choices I found unfortunate, but again, that’s probably just me being too darn picky or something, so I won’t go into all of that here. (I will say, though, that you take away the “must wear black and it must be long” option and you really do open up Pandora’s box!)

Any string players reading this? Have you played those works? Would you think it odd to hear applause after every movement? The players just disregarded it. I would have thought the audience might then have caught on, but they didn’t. And these weren’t just young’uns applauding. The older people in front of me certainly clapped.

Oh well. Guess I’m just a grumpy gus about this.