Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Vienna Philharmonic perform the overture to Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the 1954 Salzburg Festival. This is an excerpt from a film of the complete performance, directed by Paul Czinner:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“In theory the audience is a solid slab, provided with a single pair of enormous ears, which listen, and with a pair of hands, which clap. Actually it is that elusive scattering flight of winged creatures, darting around, and spending much of its time where it shouldn’t, thinking now ‘how lovely!’, now ‘my foot’s gone to sleep,’ and passing in the beat of a bar from ‘there’s Beethoven back in C minor again!’ to ‘did I turn the gas off?’ Beethoven does not flicker, Beethoven plays himself through. Applause. The piano is closed, the instruments re-enter their cases, the audience disperses more widely, the concert is over.”
E.M. Forster, “From the Audience”