It was cold, wet and windy in Manhattan on Friday night. I probably should have gone to see the Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, but what I really wanted to do was dust on the minimum mineral make-up required to be viewed in public, garb myself in some kind of fashionably bulky wool and go to dinner with a friend I’ve known since we were 12. As usual, my old stand by Dinosaur BBQ was booked solid on a Friday night, so with an amazing quickness, seeing one of, if not the, best orchestras in the world at one of, if not the, best halls in the world turned into Dinosaur BBQ take-out while watching Ratatouille with Meg in matching Dartmouth sweatpants.
As we were plating our Sweetheart Deal ribs, I said to her, “You know, I’m probably missing the concert event of the year right now.” “I’m sure there’ll be another one next week,” she replied. Of course, she’s right: the number of times I’ve felt pressured to go to a concert just because I know everyone will be talking about it at the next industry fete is ridiculous. At several life points, I’ve actually considered just lying and telling everyone I did go to “that Cameron Carpenter concert at Trinity Church on Halloween” and “the Zankel show where Jeremy Denk played the Concord AND Hammerklavier sonatas.” I’ve heard so much about both I could probably convince people I had performed the concerts myself at this point. I suppose it’s a rich man’s problem; there are so many things to do in New York that one could essentially experience the X of a lifetime every night.
I saw three excellent classical pianists last week: Jonathan Biss, who performed at the club (le) poisson rouge with my client Gabriel Kahane, Leif Ove Andsnes, and Pierre Laurent Aimard, both of whom played at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. I went in knowing two out of three would be “special.”
Let’s start with concerts that I was told would be special. The Jonathan Biss CD release concert (for this album) featured an opening set of Gabriel’s original chamber pop-ish songs, Jonathan playing Janacek, Kurtag and Schubert, and finally Jonathan and Gabriel performing Schubert songs together. I would say the venue, set-up of the concert, and repertoire choices were what “promised” to make the evening special. What actually made it special, to me, was the reverence of an audience that included Richard Goode, Gary Graffman and my other client Eric Owens for all the music heard that night nearly equally. In the Leif Ove Andsnes’ Pictures Reframed concerts on Friday and Saturday nights at Alice Tully, Andsnes performed Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” among other works, accompanied by projections by South African
video artist Robin Rhode. What “promised” to make these concerts special was six massive screens, the projections themselves, and Andsnes’ reputation for not doing “crazy” projects like this one (and yet, here he was). What made it special, to me, was how dark it was in the theater and a story Andsnes told in the post concert discussion about a Russian pianist who started playing recitals with just a desk lamp on the instrument.
On Sunday, Pierre Laurent Aimard performed an ordinary recital for Pierre Laurent Aimard; for another pianist, a second half of Beethoven and Stockhausen with a Webern encore may have been special, but it’s what we expect from him. You should know that I would pay to see Aimard wash dishes, and I have never attended a concert of his that was not excellent. My point, though, is that this particular recital wasn’t presented to me as a special event. Great pianist, great program, great hall, great piano, great concert. No singer/songwriter in a West Village club, no video artist projections.
What happens when an audience member buys a concert ticket expecting that concert is going to be a special event? 1. An audience member can leave claiming the concert was special even if it actually wasn’t. 2. An audience member can find something special in it that was not intended to be special. 3. An audience member’s expectations can be met or even exceeded by exactly what they were told they would see, and let’s not forget 4. An audience member can be completely let down and never take a chance on something “special” again. Special concerts that naturally build buzz in advance, sell tickets easily, and then don’t actually play to their “special” potential could spell more disaster for a presenter in the long run than “normal” concerts that meet or even exceed expectations.
What do presenters and performers have to do–if they “have” to “do” anything at all–to make a performance special, and how much of what makes something special is out of their control? Beware the Presenter or Performer Who Tries Too Hard To Be Special; like most things in life, no good comes from trying too hard to be something you’re not. And what if most things that make concerts special are out of presenters’ or presenters’ control? A concert could be special because someone was on a first date with his or her future spouse, and they might not realize how special that concert was until years later. Someone could be one of twenty people in the audience, and the very fact that no one knew about something that turned out to be so amazing could have made it special. In that case, the 20-tickets-sold concert would have been categorized as a failure for the presenter, but perhaps a great success for the small audience who got to see it.
And then there are nights when you’re just not in the mood to see a concert and are completely blown away by something. Or you see an artist–maybe one you work for–who you’ve seen fifty times and suddenly that night is the special for unexplainable reasons. I don’t know what guarantees a special experience or who, if anyone, is responsible for guaranteeing it. All I know for sure is that the mac ‘n cheese from Dinosaur BBQ is always special, more so when eaten at home in 5-year-old sweatpants.
First of all, in my book, anything special eaten at home in sweatpants virtually always trumps going out in pantyhose.
That said, I think the concept of “expectations” is a very real one. And I think that an experience of a concert very much includes how comfortable you are in the seat, whether you are hungry or cold, etc. In the end, though, it is the artist and the art that must rise above the mundane and transport us. Great performances cut to the heart and, no matter what your personal circumstances or your expectations, they can lift you up into another realm.
All of us who work and live in the classical music world have experienced this – and this is why we keep going back. Live performance is like a drug – you just never know when you’ll experience something other-wordly.
One memorable night for me was experiencing Handel’s Alcina at Covent Garden, many years ago. I had no expectations and didn’t know the music. I don’t recall the singers or conductor, but I remember raising my hands in the air as if to catch and keep the music. I’ll never forget it.