Peter 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.)
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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
Why? The audience’s tickets pay his salary. He should stop the scolding and go back to waving his baton. No wonder young people don’t want to attend a classical music concert.
What a ludicrous comment….
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?
Exactly, the phones are collected at standup comedy venues and the audience members more than willingly deposit their phones.
Ali, is that really true? (or are you pulling legs???!). And which country’s stand-ups are you talking about? Because it sounds like a good idea to me, for concert-halls as well as for theatres, where it’s even more of an issue.
Probably more effective would be simply to block the incoming signal for the duration of the concert. I have no idea how that could be achieved but I am sure it canot be difficult.
I attended a Bruckner 7 in Hong Kong at the weekend with Vasily Petrenko conducting. During the entirety of a marvellous performance, I heard all of just one cough. No phones ringing, no distractions. Just a wonderful evening.
It has been possible to do this for decades. The Americans fear litigation
It wasn’t a phone call though, it was clearly an alarm that had been set on the phone that the user didn’t know how to turn off. It went off again after a “snooze” period and an usher took it from the hall.
Um – not sure how to put this, Cyn Bys. I think it was a joke? Not a very good one, admittedly, but….oooh look, it even says so. The idea of a conductor with earphones is patently ridiculous, so….
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 2024, folks, not 1954. Ringing phones are now part of our everyday environment. Sorry, but you’ll have to learn how to deal with it.
True Carl – so are electric scooters and chainsaws. Doesn’t mean they have to be brought to a live event and switched on. ‘Everyday environment’, as you put it, doesn’t include live music-making. Obviously, pop and rock concerts have an entirely different vibe. But most concert-goers want to listen to the music, uninterrupted by other people’s noisy gadgets.
Chainsaws at a live concert are entirely justified as acoustical extras when Klangkunst is performed, which often sounds like industrial noise. Actually, at the Donaueschingen Festival chainsaws are sometimes used as instruments.
Well please explain, Carl, why passengers on planes are perfectly happy either to switch their devices to airplane mode or off altogether, and yet you and others inform concertgoers that phones are a fact of life and we have to “deal with” occasional ringing at concerts? That’s a nonsensical argument!
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.
So any number of phones going off in, say the quiet section of a Bruckner symphony is ok because ‘phones are here the stay’?
You didn’t read, did you, Carl? Tell us, on the doll, where you were scolded…
I think you’re wrong, Carl. When mobiles first came in, there was an epidemic of silly ring-tones. That has largely (largely!) died out, certainly in the UK, because people realised how irritating it was. There’s no good reason why we have to ruin the enjoyment of thousands at a great event because of the crass stupidity of a small few.
Having said that, I’m not sure of the best way of overcoming it! I must say, I go to a lot of concerts, and it is many years since I heard a phone go off, so it’s not a huge problem, just a very annoying one.
Congratulations, Carl, for the most ridiculous comment I’ve read on this site for a long time. There are many things that are “a simple fact of life today”; they don’t all belong in the concert hall.
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.
Spot on! In fact, it might be that ‘other guy’ on the other side of the phone call attempting to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn…and with reversed roaming charges charged against your account!
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.
It might have been “It ain’t necessarily so”.
Good enough for the church? Really? Perhaps use the baptism bowl as a urinal at same time?
“Hey” – you refer to “Luddites” but you live in a place which sounds incredibly backward.
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.
It depends on who is doing the body-searching and whether he/she is a good-looking person…..just sayin’.
Vaude! Mahler’s 6th, even before you go in….
In her memoirs, Alma Mahler relates that Mahler got the idea of the Hammerschlag in his sixth when he was again disturbed by the ringing of her iphone.
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?
Sick or dead people were carried-off on stretchers, which happened more often during performances of Mahler symphonies.
Decreases the surplus population,to quote Mr Dickens!!
takes 3 seconds to run outside the hall doors and call
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!
No, a taser would cause a lot of screaming.
Oh you’ve obviously never been shot with a taser.
Creates too much mess.
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.”
You can read it here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/saturday-night-s-philadelphia-orchestra-bruckner-bliss-was-interrupted-by-a-cell-phone-again/ar-AA1rqaej
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)!!
“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 have never forgotten to turn my phone off in a concert hall or theatre because I turn it on only (a) to make calls, which I don’t do in a concert hall or theatre; (b) for relatively short periods when there might be an imp-ortant call, but not if I’m in a concert hall or theatre.
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
“always with that stupid bleach blonde hair”
That is a woke comment because you are accusing him of cultural/racial appropriation from Scandinavians.
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.
Isaac Stern, at a Milwaukee recital that was similarly interrupted: he pulled the fiddle from under his chin and announced, “your microwave dinner is ready.”
And going way way back on the general subject of ringing phones during a performance, I still remember the morning in 1963 when my parents at breakfast could not stop talking about something they’d seen the night before on TV (after my sister and I were safely asleep I assume). The comedian Shelley Berman having a complete and frightening breakdown over a ringing telephone during his performance. One irony is that one-sided phone conversations were a key part of his act, even before Bob Newhart. Before that night he was a mainstay on television although as a pre-teen I never quite got what my dad was laughing at so much.
I think orchestras should start using a solution like Yondr.
Each device goes into a locked bag upon entry. The bagged device is always in the owner’s possession and opened upon exiting the hall.
Some major pop/rock performers but Yondr is very popular for schools and comedy shows.
It seems ludicrous we have to even consider solutions such as these but many are completely addicted to their devices.
A lot on which to comment, after reading 44 submissions.
I agree heartily with many of the suggestions with respect to removing offenders or making patrons check phones.
I don’t see these happening. I have learned (at least in Wien) that the ushers, ticket-takers, and Garderobe personnel are not employed by the halls: they are hired by an outside service provider. They almost never enter the auditoria during performances, and are very often totally oblivious to whatever is being performed, except for when and how long pauses are to occur.
They would have to be educated on the newly-established etiquette, required to sit through performances (and how many would you need in a 2,000-seat hall?), and the contracts between the theatres/halls renegotiated which would likely result in a cost hike passed-on to the attendees.
I know this will sound extreme, but I am at an age and in a place where it is possible: I do not have an iPhone/Smartphone and never will. I retain an ancient (2008?) Nokia Handy, and have never taken it – or its predecessor – with me to any kind of performance, from the Burg Kino to Musikverein. I do not have a contract for regular phone service: I found a plan sponsored by a supermarket in which I pay 10 € per year for basic service, based on the number of minutes used. Anyone calling me will immediately get a message saying that I am not available by phone; I can be reached my email or post. I keep the phone shut off (after one of my doctors’ offices started sending automated text messages reminders at 02:00), and check it maybe once a week to see if anyone called or sent a text.
This way I save a lot of money, don’t bring more overpriced plastic into the world, resist the urge to send out daily photos of my amazing three-legged cat (or my latest clever vegan lunch concoction), or worry about disrupting a concert, ballet, opera, or film.
Yannick did the right thing.
Or he should wear ear plugs, so he doesn’t hear how bland and generic his conducting is – starting to remind me of that Ossetian who was always on a plane.
Ah, so it’s OK to leave your phone on if you think the conductor is “bland and generic”. Got it.
A very good conductor, sometimes an outstanding conductor, but not a great conductor. Now flooded with ego and working so hard to look like a saint full of passion and joy of making and sharing music, yet thinks it’s perfectly fine to assume that any ringing phone is intentional or total ignorance rather than accidental, humiliating the poor audience member(s) who could have been forgetful. Audience is not stupid, they don’t need mid-performance lectures. Just stopping the music is a strong enough message. Why get bitchy by giving a lecture – it’s like to respond in kind: “You disrespect me by your ringing phone, I’ll make your seat neighbor’s angry faces and my angry face forever engraved into your memories in front of everybody in the hall, so you will never set foot into my hall ever again.”
It’s a shame that some of us were possibly born a hundred years too late. 。I hate ringing phones no less than anybody else, but you don’t see me getting even lower to humiliate the offenders.
P.S. I did not mention any name. It’s only your imagination.
The ringing phone and YNS stopping to say something is not about him; it’s about the audience. People pay good money for the experience of hearing a great orchestra play a great work. They didn’t pay for the phone ringing. And an annoyed audience member can’t really shout across the hall “Turn that d—n phone off!”
Years ago I read a letter to an advice columnist. The writer was upset because she was at a choral concert and singing (or humming) along to the music. Someone behind her tapped her on the shoulder to say “We paid to listen to the chorus, not to you.”
We all have phones. Most people remember to turn off the ringer before a concert. Some probably hear the announcement and assume they have turned theirs off. In a 2000+ seat hall, the odds are pretty good one person is going to forget and then receive a call.
But Yannick is speaking for all of us.
I was in the concert and had a view of the patron whose phone was going off. It was an alarm rather than an incoming telephone call. I suspect someone had set an alarm to remind her to take pills or something similar and she didn’t know what to do to stop it. I detest interruptions but I had empathy for the person, who under stably appeared distressed and mortified.