RogerEvansOnline.com

Last week I posted an account of a musical event in which the listeners were given the liberty of non-disruptive behavior, as it came naturally to them, in a large and evocative space. This is a subject very dear to me and one on which I have written extensively in the past.

Now comes Mark Wigglesworth, bearing thoughtful concerns of his own about concert-hall orthodoxy, in which the paying public is patronized by demands that its behavior conform to the players’ presumed needs. He suggests that a suffiently compelling performance might not need such strictures.