Yannick is unnerved by ringing phone
OrchestrasPeter Dobrin reports that the Philadelphia music director was disturbed again mid-concert by a ringing phone. Bruckner was the victim.
Last time, Yannick gave the audience a tongue-lashing. Doesn’t seemed to have worked.
Maybe he should wear headphones?
(Hey, it’s a joke.)
I attended the same program on the following afternoon. I heard an effusively lyrical and gorgeously played performance of the Bruckner symphony, one of the finest I have ever heard – and I have heard Karajan, Bohm and Solti all conduct this piece live, among others. He, and the audience, had a right to be annoyed.
Here’s a link to a list of prior recipients of the medal. The list includes many beloved conductors of the past, some significant Bruckner scholars, and some names, mainly from the early years of the medal, that are unfamiliar to me.
https://www.brucknersocietyamerica.org/about/kilenyi
I applaud Yannick
A rather snide, but not unexpected, comment from this site. Why should he wear earphones? Audiences as much as artists are now assailed by extraneous noises. It used to be persistent, and to my ear, sometimes coordinated coughing by members of the audience. Always the quiet bits never when it might be drowned out. And now phones. If not ringing then being checked for the latest piece of must have text or whatever App. Maybe, time to stop the concert and forcibly escort the miscreant from the hall as the well behaved audience slow hand clap them from the premises?
Why not simply collect the phones at the entrance? At schools and offices, knives and guns are collected before entrance, often with a metal detector, why not at concert halls?
He really needs to stop scolding the audience for something that is here to stay. Phones, and the sounds they make, are a simple fact of life today. There’s nothing he or any conductor can say to change that.
No he really doesn’t, its obtrusive and disrespectful to the musicians on stage and to the audience.
It’s not about whether phones are here to stay or not. It’s about the appropriateness of their use in a particular setting.
The fact that a technology is widely available does not mean it should be used indiscriminately. Bluetooth speakers are here to stay too — would you argue that people should be free to use them during a concert performance?
It’s not very difficult to put a phone on airplane mode or switch it off altogether. Not doing it is simply a lack of consideration for others. Are we that dumb and selfish that we can’t exercise basic courtesy any longer?
People who can’t find it in themselves to turn off their phones probably don’t belong in a concert hall. Their inability to do so tells volumes about their capacity — or lack thereof — for the kind of focus necessary to truly appreciate a live performance.
An entirely sensible and true comment.
Pure BS.
Should surgeons and pilots sacrifice their concentration to check their social media or whatever appears to be of such vital importance, but never is?
They can be turned off. Most civilised people are capable of self control and those that are not should be taught a lesson by being evicted in the most embarrassing way possible.
Next time it happens, make your feelings known.
I hear that a new device is being developed to which people can delegate their self-control. It spots being in an environment where the phone’s sounds can create a social disturbance and then it turns itself off automatically. It seems that the main target group is Americans.
Where are your manners???
That’s really where it starts. Parents who let their children bring their phones to the dinner table, and check them between bites. Parents who check their own phones at the table when they are out for dinner with their kids.
Adults who cannot attend an event and pay attention to it for a couple of hours — maybe even a little longer, but there are intervals — are stunted. Nothing is being put into children these days to develop the attention span. Reading did it automatically in my childhood. Kids wanted to hear more and more of the story they were being read — they really listened to find out what happened next. The ones who grew up to read themselves — and it was most — got caught up in what they were reading and had to be dragged away from it.
Now their reading skills seem to run to “C U ” and other such comments.
Musically they seem drawn to repetitive and other beat-driven musical forms — rap, trance, whatever the latest name for it is — that do not depend upon melody lines, harmonies, any sort of musical building, nothing sustained. So another low-attention-span form.
The only “art” they seem to know is comic books or graffiti. The sophisticated ones read graphic novels. The only movies they relate to are animations of these forms.
When people consider that real life is within their phone, there is little chance of sowing them anything real elsewhere.
Phones are a fact of life, and it is a fact of life that every single phone can be turned off or put in airplane mode.
Spot on!
It’s time for elitist conductors and a few Luddites in the audience to accept that we live in the modern era, not in Victorian times.
People complain that modern audiences for classical music are shrinking, and then we seek to ostracize them when people show up with technology? Wow.
Hey, where I live, ringing phones are tolerated (if not yet accepted) in church. If it’s good enough for church, why should the concert hall be more sacrosanct?
god help us all.
Maybe your church should react. After all, it’s not going to be God on the phone.
I have read that the pope is greatly worried about the continuous ringing of his iphone, being called by worried catholics asking him to forbid phone ringing during mass, which interrupts his watching netflix movies at night.
Glad I don’t live where you live.
John D’armes, It’s a matter of timing. A ringing phone interrupted the homily/sermon by playing “When the Saints Come Marching In.” We all laughed, including the priest.
Time to get tough; although American audiences will not like it one bit. Do like the Chinese do at the Beijing concert hall: on the way in phones are required to be checked in. The efficient workers take the phone, place it in a small numbered bag that blocks signals so it won’t ring, give you a token for it and you go enjoy the concert without distractions. After the show, you pick up your phone on the way out. Now the candy wrappers that are equally annoying are another issue…
Or do it as they do in Kazakhstan: audience members for concert halls and theatres are body-searched by military at the entrance and cellphones smashed with a big hammer on the spot.
Not a great idea. When the guy at Carnegie collapsed during Yujas Rach 2 the person in the row behind called 911 immediately. Guy survived. In China he’d be dead because nobody had access to a phone…turning off a phone isn’t rocket science though it seems to elude a lot of people…in spite of pre concert reminders…
Wouldn’t the staff have access to a phone?
That is why they won’t block cell phone signals in concert halls. The technology is there, but it is considered a safety hazard, since 911 would be impossible to reach. Plus, I think it would be illegal in the US.
However did they manage such crises — and they did happen — in the days before cell phones?
Several times in the last year I’ve heard what sounded like streaming audio or video from audience members’ phones.
Concert halls need to try something besides the polite PSA before the beginning of the concert.
A sniper would be quite effective.
Now, now, dear, don’t over-react. Taser would be just fine!
I can’t access the article, but maybe he should say something like: “Please. People paid good money today to listen to Bruckner, not to your phone?”
Or try the humourous: “Tell them you already have solar panels.”
The trouble is, most if not all of us have forgotten to turn off our phones on some occasion – we just thank our lucky stars if no-one calls us. I know of a few people who have made the usual announcement at the start of an event, only for their own phone to ring later. I certainly think that concert organisers should plug the message very clearly before the concert, and again after the interval.
They do.
Indeed it is about turning it off at the right time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXDQLvRvYD8
They do what you suggest in New York. It works most of the time. Your name.made me remember the wonderful cricket ommentary of another offspinner…..Jim Laker (and googly merchant Benaud)!!
In the future, all concert halls shall be built with Faraday cages.
The loudspeaker on my phone doesn’t work and I’ve no desire to get it fixed. OK, I miss calls, but if it’s important they’ll ring back or leave a message. Fortunately, it means I never have to worry if my phone’s volume is turned off or not.
Someone should give Yannick a tongue lashing for showing up to a gig dressed like a slob always with that stupid bleach blonde hair. (Cue the down votes from the woke idiots)
I really like that conducting guy, how he dresses, yes surely many women would prefer such a man rather than those stiff old types in frock and silly long hair!
Sally
I was at the concert and the disturbance was incredibly loud and extended. Twice! Yannick took the high road in his reaction. He had to stop the Bruckner symphony thats how bad the disturbance was. And all he really said is, “can’t we leave our phones at home”. This was the perfect thing to say to someone who can not figure out how to turn their phone off. It was still a magnificent performance.
There was also a cell phone incident at the Friday afternoon performance that I attended. What makes it even worse is that they play a recorded announcement reminding people to shut off their phones both before the start of the concert and the post-intermission portion of it.
It was a very good Bruckner 7th aside from the distraction.
Very simple solution – use cell phone jammers at all classical music venues. Also eject all violators immediately.
Classical music attendance is down because of poorly educated audiences unfamiliar with the tradition and etiquette, nothing wrong with the tradition itself. I always say if they’re spending so much $ on community outreach, try to educate the adults as well as the kids.
I also attended the following performance of this program. The Bruckner performance was superb. He has really grown into his interpretation of this complex symphony that he admits to liking very much. The orchestra played magnificently and the audience behaved themselves. Perhaps orchestras should establish a policy of fining audience members who turn off their brains instead of their phones at a performance. There are always reminders to do so before each portion of the concert. How about a rogues gallery of offenders over the Encore Bar. Use their own phone to take a selfie of them. This lack of audience attention disturbs every one. Time to get tough!
Agreed. I reacted much more positively to the Friday performance than I did the last time he conducted the seventh, about a decade ago. The strings had a perfect tone for Bruckner and the brass hit the right level of blending in with the strings without blaring over them, while still standing out enough.
The idea of turning-off audience members’ brain seems quite appealing…. but that happens already in programs beginning with the OOMP.
Some people are just oblivious to the reminders to turn off electronics in the concert hall. That’s not going to change.
The solution is some form of signal jamming in the hall. Too bad if the babysitter wants to call in during the concert.