The pianist who took a phone call on stage
NewsIn the middle of a performance of Shostakovich’s piano quintet in Charleston – in the gap between the scherzo and the intermezzo movements – a mobile phone went off in the audience.
Where other artists might have displayed irritation, pianist Andrew Armstrong took the call.
Watch.
You see it here first.
A dignified and memorable way to deal with such an interruption!
Work, life balance
Excellent. I started my day online with a smile. Seems a guilty pleasure these days.
Bravo!
Mind you, I once attended a concert where the offending phone really was in the handbag of one of the orchestral violinists.
That’s so cute! But, here’s where the generation gap kicks in big time. Although I feel very young at heart, and love a good laugh as much as anyone else, I’m so darn old school. I probably would have maintained my demeanor and emotional character of that moment in the Shostakovich piece, sat silently (the embarrassment of that call and owner of the phone would have sufficed) and waited for the noise to stop. But hey, it’s 2023. There’s room for levity. Andrew carries it off super well – better than I could have, if I had dared to do that! Ah, youth!!
Any concert is better once you get youth to it.
Gilbert did that in a NYP concert of Mahler 9, he stopped the orchestra and waited (I assume with a fire-y gaze) until the elderly patron was able to silence the call. Turned out that man was a major donor and had gotten a new phone that day.
Still…
I’m amazed at what happened at the concert and the reactions of other respondents: The performance was rudely interrupted; the mood destroyed. This was an insult to fellow musicians, the audience, and to the composer. What a sad state we are in when we tolerate an interruption such as this!
He could have turned it off after the call. The audience seemed good natured about it which is what really counts.
Reminds me of when the late, great Lynn Harrell was performing with the Seattle Symphony. A phone went off and it turned to be in his pocket, to his chagrin.
Stupid beyond belief.
Absolute poetry!!
Nicely done. Kudos.
I understand that when, quite late in life, the greatly missed Shura Cherkassky was giving a recital in Wigmore Hall, London and a phone went off in the audience during his performance of Schumann’s Études Symphoniques, he leapt up and said “is that for me”? thereby bringing the house down. I wasn’t there on that ocasion and the tale might be apocryphal but I’d like to think otherwise!…
I have to believe Victor [Borge] would have precisely that!