I've heard a couple of good ones recently :).
During the interval at an Olli Mustonen recital:
'They're tuning the piano - he must be a perfectionist.'
At an Adès/Chamber Orchestra of Europe concert, just before his Three Studies after Couperin:
'Is this the Adès?'
'I'm afraid so.'
;D
At a performance of Mahler's Seventh:
"Gustav Mahler? Oh, one of those guys Alma was married to other than Werfel."
"Is that the conductor? But he's got Parkinson's!" - An elderly lady, commenting on Kurt Masur before a Schumann concert earlier this year.
"I thought it was a quiet, sad, lyric piece..." - Same elderly lady, expressing disappointment about Mahler's 6th, from a concert two weeks prior to the above.
(I was sitting next to her, and we had both been to both concerts. Not exactly "overheard", but I wasn't doing the talking. :P)
Quote from: Renfield on August 19, 2007, 11:00:18 AM
"I thought it was a quiet, sad, lyric piece..." - Same elderly lady, expressing disappointment about Mahler's 6th, from a concert two weeks prior to the above.
I wouldn't entirely disagree with her, what if she had fallen sleep, but woke up during the "Andante", but took a bathroom break during the finale....
Quote from: Mahlered on August 19, 2007, 10:19:36 AM
At a performance of Mahler's Seventh:
"Gustav Mahler? Oh, one of those guys Alma was married to other than Werfel."
wow, that's pretty bizarre
Quote from: MahlerTitan on August 19, 2007, 11:36:34 AM
I wouldn't entirely disagree with her, what if she had fallen sleep, but woke up during the "Andante", but took a bathroom break during the finale....
I think I didn't get her tone right, mainly because I omitted a critical word in translating that comment. A more accurate translation would be:
"
But I [prevously] thought it was a quiet, sad, lyric piece..."
As in: "they told me it would be sad and lyrical, but that wasn't what I heard!" She was really irked. ::)
i only wish we could describe a Mahler symphony with words!
Quote from: MahlerTitan on August 19, 2007, 11:56:35 AM
i only wish we could describe a Mahler symphony with words!
Well, I'd be tempted to suggest "
f****** awesome!", but yes, it is indeed very hard. ;D
Quote from: MahlerTitan on August 19, 2007, 11:56:35 AM
i only wish we could describe a Mahler symphony with words!
how about a comparison?
to me, better than ANYTHING.
period, no exceptions, and i won't take back my words. 8)
Quote from: Mahlered on August 19, 2007, 10:19:36 AM
At a performance of Mahler's Seventh:
"Gustav Mahler? Oh, one of those guys Alma was married to other than Werfel."
So Gustav could point to his wife and say there was his Alma Mahler. ;D
Quote from: Renfield on August 19, 2007, 11:00:18 AM
I was sitting next to her, and we had both been to both concerts. Not exactly "overheard", but I wasn't doing the talking. :P
Is that your girlfriend?
Went to a chamber music concert last year and about 1min into Mozarts 'Dissonance' String Quartet the women sitting in front of me turned to her husband and said 'this isn't Mozart!'.
Leaving the concert hall earlier this year after hearing Mahlers 4th symphony, an old lady walking in front of me turned to her female friend and said 'well that was an ordeal!'
:)
a 14/15 year old teenage girl at a LvB 5th concert: I thought they usually knock twice in a row and wait for the "who's there?"...
Quote from: Bonehelm on August 19, 2007, 09:02:51 PM
a 14/15 year old teenage girl at a LvB 5th concert: I thought they usually knock twice in a row and wait for the "who's there?"...
Fate
fate who?
Quote from: M forever on August 19, 2007, 05:09:34 PM
Is that your girlfriend?
Not really. But she was one of those people who attend two or three concerts a year, for 50 years, and don't really care for understanding the music... And seeing as I was *gasp* reading the program, she decided I was an experienced music-listener *cough cough* and proceeded to unleash her miriad observations about those two concerts upon me. :o
Still, it was fun enough for the intermission, since I'm not one of those people who get off their seats the moment the music stops and come back right before it resumes - not my style, that... -_-
As far funny concert behaviour goes, but not exactly a "quote", I remember from that same Mahler 6 the elderly lady was commenting on a couple in front of me, early twenties, obviously semi-clueless about Mahler... And the guy (who was sitting directly in front of me) could not find peace from his girlfriend startling whenever anything sudden happened, and making sure to
point out - yes, as in "poke her finger to the direction of, very obviously" - the percussionists before they played. Mildly entertaining, all in all...
But I don't really get funny quotes from concerts... I get people with broken limbs turning up late and all-bandaged-up for the concert, I get schoolchildren hollering at their favourite conductor, I get a guy audibly saying "look at him play!" in the middle of a piano recital, but not much in the way of really funny quotes, alas. :(
Phlegm, though it wasn't as funny at the time.
it's not really funny, but i did hear this anciently old lady after Mahler 5 saying "now that was Mahler 6, right?" and someone corrected her.
but I couldn't help thinking if it was 6, she might not've lived to see the end after the hammer blows and all...
I was stopped coming out of a rehearsal for some Beethoven and an old woman asked what was on. I explained and she said...'Oh, did he write any good tunes then?'
Opening of third act of Rosenkavalier the man beside me said....'I thought this guy was supposed to be the waltz king, there has hardly been a waltz all night...bloody awful.'
On the way out from Peter Grimes, I heard one woman say to another, 'Exactly the same happened to a friend of mine.' I assume she was not talking about the opera, but it was a nice moment.
Mike
Quote from: knight on August 20, 2007, 06:14:08 AM
Opening of third act of Rosenkavalier the man beside me said....'I thought this guy was supposed to be the waltz king, there has hardly been a waltz all night...bloody awful.'
At least he got the odd waltz or two in
Rosenkavalier. Imagine if he went to
Elektra expecting the Blue Danube...
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 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" :)
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!".
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." ::)
To whom was he speaking? Did he wear an SS uniform?
Quote from: M forever on August 22, 2007, 01:35:05 AM
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
Quote from: Larry Rinkel on August 21, 2007, 06:18:26 AM
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?
Quote from: Larry Rinkel on August 21, 2007, 06:18:26 AM
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".
In one of the Beethoven concerts:
"Hey musicians, can you stop playing, I got a call on my cell"
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...
Quote from: Manuel on August 22, 2007, 03:45:28 AM
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?)
Quote from: Novitiate on August 22, 2007, 07:27:22 AM
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.
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.
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. :D
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!" :o 0:) ;D
Quote from: M forever on August 22, 2007, 01:35:05 AM
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.
Leaving an opera house after a performance of Otello, passing a trio of black-ties:
"And all that fuss about a snot rag!"
Quote from: uffeviking on August 22, 2007, 06:55:07 PM
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)... ;D
This is one of the most enjoyable recent threads, I have to say...
--Bruce
Quote from: uffeviking on August 22, 2007, 06:55:07 PM
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! :P
Quote from: bhodges on August 22, 2007, 07:03:50 PM
This is one of the most enjoyable recent threads, I have to say...
--Bruce
*BUMP*
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).
About two minutes into the Berg violin concerto, a girl asked her bf: "When will they be done with tuning and start playing?"
Quote from: springrite on May 31, 2010, 12:50:20 PM
About two minutes into the Berg violin concerto, a girl asked her bf: "When will they be done with tuning and start playing?"
I asked that myself when I heard it for the first time. ;D But I was at home, not at a concert venue.
During a piano recital in which a short modern piece was being played: "I didn't realize my 3 year-old is a composer!"
I have one which just happened in my last concert. Not so funny, more like annoying.
I was attending a Beethoven's 4th PC concert and the auditorium was silent enough when the pianist started to play those magical opening chords. It was perfectly fine until the first bar is over and the lady behind me, recognising the music, suddenly said: "Oh, I love this" to her friend before the pianist even completed the opening phrase! Needless to say, I was really annoyed because to me that opening phrase is 50% make or break of a great performance of the piece.
A piano teacher behind me, who apparently never got past Ethelbert Nevin, remarked on noticing the next on the program was a Telemann flute concerto, "Oh, he's German! I hope it's not too modern". ::)
Things I can come up with 'cause I'm bored:
From the folks nearby:
10) "Honey, look! The timanist is nodding off. Get your phone out so we can take a picture. This is goin' to get tweeted"
9) "Mmm. Yes, wonderful tempo. Mmm. I see. Wonderful. Ahhh, yes....wow."
8 ) "This beef jerky is unreal sweetheart"
7) "Psssst....yeah, get the Menuhin"
6) "Daddy, I'm going to get sick!"
5) "Oh you mean they're just warming up? Whew!"
4) "Where's Hilary Hahn?"
3) "So this is what classical music sounds like."
2) "Just throw up in your water bottle, honey"
and the number one fake thing!
1) "BROVO! BROVOOOOOO!!"
A man with a butterfly tie leans over to his wife and mutters to her ear:
"What in the world are we doing here?"
Last night at the LSO, there was an audience member with a serious mohawk - as in, the parts of his head that were not mohawk were completely shaved, and the mohawk itself was four inches tall and tipped with blond dye. He was wearing a blue T-shirt. The T-shirt said:
Morpheus thinks that Neo is
THE ONE
He isn't.
ANNE-SOPHIE MUTTER
is
THE ONE
My mom is the consummate Blue Hair.
"Oh,...what is THAT??"
"I like what pleases my ear."
"o,...oh, gosh,... what??"
"Is that muuusic??"
It's gets a bit much being around Strauss-heads, and Welk-heads, and Skynyrd-heads. This Thread is making me want to kick someone old. >:D
I'm starting to hate all old people. Please,...are there any cool ones out there? They've been around the longest,...why are they so daft?
I know, I know,...just rhetorical.
Also at Der Rosenkavalier:
"I don't understand why that woman's in drag". Which started me on the road to finding out.....
At Parsifal (in a box, so could at least eat and drink in relative comfort and obscurity). Hand reaches over from next box and voice follows:
"God, would you pass a glass of that to me, I'm desperate".
At Evgeniy Onegin "But none of those dance tunes is RUSSIAN".
I think the best thing I ever overheard was this old lady (probably about 80) at an Edinburgh Festival concert. The Ligeti violin concerto was on the program and I overheard her saying to someone nearby "I'm not looking forward to this; I don't like modern music."
30 minutes later, I heard her say something like "I didn't know modern music could be like that! Is there a recording out there?" I hope I'm as openminded as her when I reach that age.