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Kissin was here last night. Being a major label artist everyone came and he had a full house. It doesn't happen more than a handful of times in here every season. So surely there are many who came to see him as a "novelty item" or "digital althete"), instead of appreciating the music

The thing is, after the program is done.......some people started to shout like in a pop concert and some even cheaply clap not out of appreciation but hoping him to play as many encore as possible.(he finally did 5. For the clapping I can tell coz there is a row of those childish individuals sitting behind me which i overheard all their small talks and giggles) I felt every bad but also on reflections......classical music is not exactly the most popular genre now. Maybe that's something the more old-school kind of person like me has to live with.

I do not think there was much, if any, breach of etiquette as long as the audience was quiet during the performance. Shouting "bravo" to show your appreciation is considered good manners, so i suppose shouting other things that would be considered complimentary would be fine. Clapping to induce an encore also seems OK, because why would you want more if you did not enjoy the main program? As far as why people go to concerts or recitals, there are always many in attendance that are not there to appreciate the music, whether they are good mannered or not.

That reminds me of something Renee Fleming wrote about in her book "The Inner Voice", when she describes her manager seated during the performance shouting bravos freely and resonantly throughout the concert in order to "propel the audience into a frenzy". Seems that impresarios have can have audience "plants" throughout to ensure that the concert experience is a memorable one for the listener?
Of course that is nothing compared to the Billy Joel/Elton John concert I went to a few nights later. That was a total screamfest. But the Kissin recital almost came close to a pop experience, much like Lang Lang, which I thankfully passed on.

The funny thing is - classical concerts used to be a lot less stuffy. Concerts in the 19th century often saw the consumption of food and shouted cheers and jeers.

We often hear reports of Liszt being something of a rock star, and I've often found it a bit odd that people who long for those "good ol' days" are often the same people who wish the other members of the audience would shut up during the Dante sonata and only show their appreciation for the work with applause only at the conclusion.

And, in piano soirees in homes, not only music, but billiards, puppetry, food, and dance were part of the evenings entertainment.

They let the "audience" move around.

Classic piano were the "hits" of the day, and the composers and pianists the "celebrities" of the music world.

All this without electricity?

Liszt is one unique character and he deliberately foster such an image himself.

I completely don't mind if people are genuinely showing their appreciation but what we have here is some rather childish individual at my back treating it as a game betting when he would stop and the general concept here is, since i paid $70 ~ $100 for my ticket i should get him to play as long as he would be willing to.

As pianist we all know how exhausting it is after a proper recital. I am truly grateful as long as someone has given a performance prepared.(he in fact did make a major mistake and did tried a program that maybe a bit too deep for his age). I do think it's a bit unfair to ask him to entertain the audience after 2 encore(and he has a long ling waiting for signing). The only exception maybe Andre Schiff......despite the age he really looks fresh and ready for another full program at the end.

P.S. I am not living in US and classical music is rather young in comparing to US Cities.

Why do you find it a bit odd? I don't exactly long for the good old days in general, but I do wish that some performers felt more freedom to play as the individuals they are and as the music moves them to play, rather than trying so hard to present a nit-pickily exact aural version of the score and nothing but the score, with only the barest hint of their own self showing through the cracks, almost as if they were apologizing for even being there. I think that wish of mine is in line with some values that classical musicians held in the past, but I don't see that it automatically means that I should want rowdies acting up in the audience during the performance of a piece, as they may have done in the past.

A lot depends on the piece - some piano and orchestra works were apparently designed to give the audience places to applaud during the piece (during the dull orchestra parts while the soloist was silent for a bit between the opportunities to demonstrate their art) and it might be fun to attend a concert where that happened. On the other hand, I would not be a happy listener if the crowd erupted in cheers after the double-note trills in a great performance of the last movement LvB's op. 111. But of course, that work wasn't the sort of thing played at most of those non-stuffy concerts of the past - more likely there would be large chunks of brilliant and pretty but musically fairly trivial fare, presented in a sort of variety show format with various assisting artists coming and going on stage, with maybe just a movement or two of some "serious" music thrown in.

But anyway, no, I don't think a wish for more characterful and inspired playing from some pianists who would be good at it is incompatible or incongruous with wanting to hear the performance uninterrupted by audience noise. At least in my case, it's not about a desire to return to the past so much as a desire for a larger range of interpretation for some of today's performers.

Can you name me a piece or two that were "apparently designed to give the audience places to applaud during the piece...."? You are suggesting that the only interesting parts of a work for piano and orchestra is when the piano is playing? Well then, why not just get rid of the orchestra all together while you're at it, since you'll be drowning them out with your applause? Sorry, I don't get it!

He wasn't unique at all in being a piano superstar. Chopin, Thalberg, Alkan, Weber...All of them knew how to "put on a show," and did.



At age 37 (38?), and a performing career spanning over 25 years, I'm curious what repertoire you found him to be too young for? I'm not a major fan of Kissin, still your crticism struck me as peculiar...

Pianists play till an old age. Some like Earl Wild was still playing at 88(I'm not sure about now as i heard although he's no major health issue he's frail). Perlemuter studied Chopin's etudes until his death. So for Kissin he still has many years to grow. He did some Prokofiev(3 pieces from Romeo and J / Sonata No.8) and some Chopin that night. The Prokofievs were very very good, as if he's speaking in his native tongue. Later he did the Polonaise-fantasie, some mazurkas and etudes. They were ok but it sounded more like being performed by someone who has just won a major competition. The louder passages lack elegance and it reminds me of his wonderful prokofievs. the etudes especially lack insight as if he's implying yeah i know every single one of them when i was 12 and here they are. Also I wonder if he knows for us the audience sitting like almost 20 meters away....in such a big hall, when he hits the afterburner and goes molto Prestissimo, all we can hear is a blur. For pieces like the mazurkas i always have an impression that those are pieces that you need time to reflect on. And i associate them with older pianist like Fou Ts'ong. So perhaps he is still green in the department.

the Kissin concert actually sounds as if it was kind of fun...

the only concerts i've been to, where stuffy and boring.
there is always the see of gray and the bobbing heads when i go to concerts. one time i went to a piano/violin concert and it was painfully quiet the whole time.

The pianist made weird faces at the piano, he was all over the place and he taped the rhythm with his feet (he could rival Lang Lang... I am dead serious).

The violinist also made weird faces and she jumped everytime she had to play a high note.

The audiance was entierly made up of old people exept for me, my friend and the guy in front of us with the long hair who was headbanging to Shubert .

I had to bite my lip for 4 hours (+ encore) to stop my self from laughing and I wasn't the only one (some old guy bursted out laughing just near the end ). it was heck... I could not enjoy the music because of the tension in the room.

I actually wish concerts where more like the concerts in Liszt's day. Those sound mutch more enjoyable and laid back than the ones we have today.

I doubt that anybody can do that!
However I think composers fully expected that the orchestral coda to a brilliant concerto movement might not be heard at all, in the same way that the coda to a brilliant operatic aria in which the singer has just screeched out their high Cs is often drowned out by hysterical audience applause.
There is a report of a concert early in the nineteenth century where the "Military" bits in Haydn's 100th symphony had to compete with the noise of a group of ladies in the audience who set up their own racket by clapping and cheering every time the percussion started to play. Would "Papa" Haydn have been pleased? ...Somehow I doubt it!

I should be more conscientious and go to the trouble of actually digging some up, I guess, but am too lazy. The idea actually comes from a book I'm reading by Kenneth Hamilton, "After the Golden Age", and when I read it, the concept right away made a lot of sense to me. He describes how audiences at one time would applaud while the music was still in progress after a soloist did something especially pleasing, and goes on to say that it appears that some pieces were designed with this in mind, somewhat in the way that jazz musicians today sort of make room for the applause that occurs after a solo. It is a very interesting book, and I highly recommend it.

Although I can't name specific pieces right off the top of my head, it seems like over the years I've heard quite a few recordings or broadcasts of piano and orchestra works from the 19th century that are obviously meant as virtuoso display pieces for the piano, and the orchestra plays mostly "filler" material, and it is obvious that if the audience applauded during that part, they wouldn't miss much important musical material. I don't think I've encountered one of these in a live concert these days, interestingly enough.

Typically, there'll be a section with a lot of brilliant passagework for the piano, and then the orchestra fills in for a bit with nothing particularly interesting and then the piano re-enters with more flashy stuff (or maybe, as an alternative, a lyric episode). You surely recognize the format - I think a lot of them are in rondo form, and the orchestra sometimes just repeats their material over and over as a refrain, while the piano plays new material each time around. I'm thinking of guys like Hummel, Moscheles, Field, Thalberg, et al., and titles like "Introduction and Grand Concert Rondo Brilliante On [fill in the blank with some tune celebrating some royal personage or 'national airs' or maybe an opera]".

Obviously, this isn't true of all piano and orchestra pieces from that or any other era.

I'm not so sure (but who knows?) that the composers of the type of piece you mentioned actually expected applause during the "filler" material (maybe a lack of attention when the soloist wasn't playing) but I'm pretty sure that they grew used to having it interrupt the final bars of their concerto movements, which is why they are often very perfunctory. You can still hear this sort of behaviour in the opera house, occasionally.
Perhaps Beethoven experienced this too, which is why the cadenza of the C minor concerto closes quietly and, arising from a mysterious quietness, builds to its climax at the final chords of the movement, thus pre-empting premature applause.

I could imagine some pieces - like sets of variations by Alkan - where after a particularly over the top variation, there would be a pause, and the audience would applaud.

Anyway, it sounds like it was a fun concert, and I don't see any breach of ettiquette.
Kissin is known for playing lots of encores, so he most likely paced himself. That was probably the reason for the extended applause.

Sounds a lot like our piano parties!