Funny things overheard at concerts :D

[Manon]

I went to a classical music concert last year.The concert finished but the audience didn't leave concert hall.The conductor turned his face to us and said:

"Ok, it is over, we won't play anymore.We are going" 

[Siedler]

Well not that funny but I can't think anything else at the moment. After Salome performance, two old ladies behind me:
"Did you like it?"
"No, it was awfully modern for me!".

[MishaK]

A German guy in the audience sitting right next to me at an on tour performance of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig in Chicago (not realizing that others in his vicinity might understand German):

"Yes, and these guys [in Chicago] were still murdering Indians when in Leipzig they were already playing beautiful music." 

[M forever]

To whom was he speaking? Did he wear an SS uniform?

[Bonehelm]

To whom was he speaking? Did he wear an SS uniform?

hahahahaha

No, maybe he looks like you, a prisoner trying to escape from prison

[Mozart]

Not funny at the time, but true:

I turned around during a concert to ask the people behind me to stop talking.

Reply: "Just shut up and mind your own business. We weren't talking to you."

Did you open up a can of whoop ass?

[m_gigena]

Not funny at the time, but true:

I turned around during a concert to ask the people behind me to stop talking.

Reply: "Just shut up and mind your own business. We weren't talking to you."

I thought all audiences in the first world would be more educated.
What you point out happens here all the time. When I ask people to keep make silence not only they don't stop chatting, but they seem to get upset and speak louder.
Most old ladies behave as if they were inmune to well-manners. I always ask them to keep quiet, tough; and if that happened in the first part of the concert, during the interval I turn around and say something like:
"ladies, please chat now so that you don't ruin our enjoyment of the second part of the concert... as you did with the first one".

[Saul]

In one of the Beethoven concerts:

"Hey musicians, can you stop playing, I got a call on my cell"

[Guido]

After a piece of Schoenberg - Cambridge undergraduate (around 20 years old), who clearly knew very little about classical music at all, said with all the pomposity and expertise he could muster:

"The problem with Schoenberg, is that he had a complete inability to write a decent tune."

As if Schoenberg was just writing serial music because he couldn't think of any good melodies!

Unfortunately this type of person is far too common at Cambridge...

[Novi]

I thought all audiences in the first world would be more educated.
What you point out happens here all the time. When I ask people to keep make silence not only they don't stop chatting, but they seem to get upset and speak louder.
Most old ladies behave as if they were inmune to well-manners. I always ask them to keep quiet, tough; and if that happened in the first part of the concert, during the interval I turn around and say something like:
"ladies, please chat now so that you don't ruin our enjoyment of the second part of the concert... as you did with the first one".

Lol, you should come to Edinburgh. For the most part, we have very polite and friendly audiences 0:). I remember hearing a little old lady say to her friend, 'Let me check how long this piece is - I don't want to clap in the wrong place.' (It was something slightly non-standard - Dutilleux maybe?)

[not edward]

Lol, you should come to Edinburgh. For the most part, we have very polite and friendly audiences 0:). I remember hearing a little old lady say to her friend, 'Let me check how long this piece is - I don't want to clap in the wrong place.' (It was something slightly non-standard - Dutilleux maybe?)

Dutilleux in Edinburgh? Sigh, I never got to hear any while I was there (oddly enough I did get to hear the violin concerto in Dundee, though).

I think Edinburgh audiences do tend to be a bit more openminded, though: I recall a bunch of old guys having heard a distinctly odd Sciarrino piece (Recitativo oscuro, if I remember correctly) and one of them saying "Well, I don't like modern music, and I didn't understand that piece, but I'd much rather hear something like it than another mediocre performance of a Beethoven symphony," to which there was general agreement.

[MDL]

It wasn't exactly funny, but telling. After an ENO performance of Zimmermann's Die Soldaten, which I'd really enjoyed, I walked past a rather glum-looking bunch of suits, one of whom muttered, "Well, at least we can say we did it."

And I can't remember the exact quote, but I after the first movement of Simon Rattle's CBSO Mahler 6 at the Proms many moons ago, a crew of Hoorays behind me mistook the offstage cowbells for some accident in the bar.

[Greta]

edward, I love your Copland quote.

Anyway, the really funny modern music things I used to hear were back 10 years ago when our local symphony actually had a composer-in-residence, the first I remember wrote some very introspective, freely atonal works, but there were sighs and grumbles, and distinctly remember an "oh god, not another one" from a couple near me while perusing a challenging libretto before one of his premieres.

The next, and last, we had, wrote some wild piece that had a guy with a huge sledgehammer and anvil come to the front of the stage and strike it at key points, people are very polite here and stayed through, but going down the stairs from the balcony and I heard an "Is that...music?" and much general dismay of the "blue-haired" crowd.

I'm always amused when I go to concerts in the big city (Houston) and overhear people nearby educating their companions about the music beforehand - and they actually know what they are talking about! Wagnerites discussing operas behind me, at a Pops concert the man to my right gave his wife a lesson on French film composers. 

Also amusing, was exiting a concert and hearing two older men in the throng behind me critiquing the concert and the playing just like we do with recordings here on GMG. "Ragged ensemble moments, did you hear the horns?!" and "Oddly slow tempi". Both statements partly true, though overexaggerated.

Overheard by my boyfriend, not me, though I did participate in the conversation with my horrible Dutch, when we were at the world premiere of Johan De Meij's 3rd Symphony, after his preconcert talk, there was one older couple who was keen to get his autograph and struck up a conversation with us as we were the only other ones that did. Funny story: The guy was interested in recommendations of the composer's work, he was completely unfamiliar with him, "I did not even realize he was famous!"

So why was he there, at a world premiere of a piece and composer he'd never heard? Well, that day in Amsterdam he had come upon a man who had a flat tire on his bicycle on the bustling city streets, and didn't have a cell, was rather stranded. He gave the guy a lift, lended his phone, helped him with the bike. And the stranded guy says "Thank you so much, it's really important that I get back, you see, tonight's the world premiere of my 3rd Symphony..." So as a thank-you the composer gave his rescuer free tickets, and the man and his wife said "Well, we figured it might be fun to come because the composer was a very nice man, and if he's written 3 symphonies already he must be pretty good!" 0:)

[MishaK]

To whom was he speaking? Did he wear an SS uniform?

He was speaking to what I guess was his wife. He was overweight, wore glasses and was balding, not that that would matter. It was hilarious though. I think he was a tourist.

[uffeviking]

Leaving an opera house after a performance of Otello, passing a trio of black-ties:

"And all that fuss about a snot rag!"

[bhodges]

Leaving an opera house after a performance of Otello, passing a trio of black-ties:

"And all that fuss about a snot rag!"

Oh, great one...that is too funny...I would have burst out laughing (and then suffered the consequences)...

This is one of the most enjoyable recent threads, I have to say...

--Bruce

[Renfield]

Leaving an opera house after a performance of Otello, passing a trio of black-ties:

"And all that fuss about a snot rag!"

Hahaha, down to the essence of Shakespeare, they were!

[Opus106]

This is one of the most enjoyable recent threads, I have to say...

--Bruce

*BUMP*

[False_Dmitry]

Two foreign tourists overheard in English during the interval at the Malaya Opera, St Petersburg, Russia, in the 1980s

"OK, I understood that bit, and then Evgeny shoots Lensky in the duel, fine!  But why the Egyptian pyramids and the Sphinx, what is that about?  And who is the guy in the Pharoah costume?"

(In the 1980s in the USSR, theatres would often sell programmes for recent performances for which programmes had sold-out on the night in question, in case people still wanted a copy.  Our two tourists had gone on the right night... but bought the wrong programme).

[springrite]

About two minutes into the Berg violin concerto, a girl asked her bf: "When will they be done with tuning and start playing?"