Klarinet Archive - Posting 000796.txt from 1999/10

From: "Karl Krelove" <kkrelove@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] re: Yo there, piano guy! Boooooo!
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 22:13:14 -0400

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Blumberg [mailto:reedman@-----.com]
> Subject: [kl] re: Yo there, piano guy! Boooooo!
>
> Since I sent the article, I give my thoughts on the subject. I
> feel that it
> is very, very poor taste to boo a performer, I don't care how badly the
> piece is played, how sloppy it was, or if the performer got in the middle
> of the performance, and said "forget it" (or something a little more off
> center;).

I was there for the Saturday night performance and heard the booing. It was
certainly not an overwhelming demonstration of disapproval by even a large
claque in the audience. From the sound it may have been one or two people,
but I have no way of knowing for certain.

As a matter of fact, in this case, the performance was quite clean so far as
I could tell. It was actually in some ways quite beautiful. It's great sin
was that it was eccentric. The tempi were, in SOME instances unusually slow.
There was also a tendency on Pogorelich's part to delay resolutions at
cadences, and Sawallisch (the orchestra's music director) was having obvious
problems cueing orchestral entrances to coincide with some of those
resolutions. I can imagine it was a difficult performance for the orchestra.
The news report here said that Pogorelich had asked for more rehearsal time
before Monday night's performance at Carnegie Hall and, when he was refused,
he cancelled his performance (Andre Watts, who filled in, was apparently
given a fifteen minute rehearsal, presumably to reset tempi). Apparently,
Sawallisch made no bones of disapproving Pogorelich's approach in rehearsal
(the news report mentioned Sawallisch had rolled his eyes in frustration).
Too, the booing was probably encouraged by an unusually scathing review of
Friday afternoon's performance that appeared in the Saturday morning edition
of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The bottom line, however, was that for the most part the audience, so far as
I could tell, was polite, and the booing was limited and mingled with some
actually enthusiastic applause. The news hype that surrounded the series
made more of it than probably it deserved. Philadelphia will probably never
book Pogorelich again, and his performance will be an aberration people will
remember because of its uniqueness, not because it indicated any kind of
trend or tendency for change in audience behavior.

Karl Krelove

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