So the audience applauded after the third movement of the Mahler? I take this as a hopeful sign in a way: those who applauded (how many were there?) had obviously never heard the piece before... and yet they came along on this occasion to hear it (unless they were Kurtág fans who didn't know anything about Mahler, but I doubt that there are any such people).

Continuing from Ollie's remark, though, when that piece actually does end the last thing I'm thinking about is clapping my hands together. The last sound fades from the ears fairly quickly, but it doesn't fade from the mind quickly at all. I wonder if any conductor would go so far as to request a few minutes' silence after the music was finished... although that kind of coercion might give a wrong, quasi-sacramental message... and I wonder what the audience did at the first performance.

I wish I could have heard it. I think Ilan Volkov is one of the few reasons there are to be hopeful about the future of the orchestra. What did people think of his contribution?

I did hear it (on R3, not in the hall) and am just as keen to hear others' views because I was puzzled by it. I think Volkov is doing great things with the BBCSSO both in terms of raising their game and in terms of repertoire and I was urging this on to be a big success. But I really just didn't 'get' what he was doing with this symphony. The orchestral balance seemed very strange in places, the first movement in particular, and some of the tempo changes just seemed (to me) mystifying. Given that he had chosen the work for a big international concert I have absolutely no doubt he had prepared his approach carefully and deliberately but he left me behind this time, I'm afraid. I'd (seriously) like to be proved wrong and will be listening again to see if I can do it for myself. Can anybody help?

Yes, something was obviously awry with the solo violin passage in the first movement (although I did even momentarily wonder, given what had gone before, whether it was a deliberate interpretative point). I'm sure it can happen to anyone and my heart went out to her too. (Can it conceivably have been the violin itelf that played up at the crucial moment?) A reminder that it's tough and exposed out there on the concert platform. But bravo for recovering: that's professionalism.   

What a work though

Sadly, I was able only to hear part of it; I was out and had to miss the entire first movement and the first few minutes of the second. I therefore do not know whether any audience members applauded after the first movement but the did after all the others. I also do not know what happened about the applause at the work's première. What I do remember very distinctly is a BPO Prom performance of it some years ago conducted by Abbado where the audience did not applaud after the close of the symphony for well over a minute, such was the power of the performance; no extraneous coercion was involved. To achieve that with a Prom audience is really something!

I agree with you remarks about Volkov non Solomon and urge you (and others) - if you've not already done so - to listen to his Roslavets CD on Hyperion.

What I heard of the Mahler 9 performance last evening left a pretty positive impression in terms both of the care with which it had been thought out and the passionate and unreserved commitment of the players; where I did rather part company with it was in the finale which struck me as placing too great an emphasis on full-on intensity of expression and not enough on the aspects of exquisite tenderness and resignation without which that movement doesn't really take off. In fact, I don;t ever recall a performance of that finale that felt as though its principal purpose was to pin me against the wall with a kind of emotional assault. I have nevertheless to admit to having been intrigued by that approach, but in the end I was not really convinced by it.

It remains for me one of the greatest symphonies of the past century...

Best,

Alistair

If it's the Tippett/VW Prom you're asking about, Ron, I didn't have any balance problems from where I was standing (bang in the centre of the Arena). Although Philip Dukes' out-of-tune first viola entry had to be heard to be believed.

Sadly not, George, for in both the first and third movements she started to shake like a jelly.  She looked as if she felt so unworthy to take a bow at the end. But she got a few "bravo"s. 

That's very rough luck. She has my every sympathy. Let's hope it was just a one-off.

I'm assuming that Opi means the LA bitrate, Bryn. After some rejigging and rewiring a couple of days ago, I'm now recording the DAB and FM feeds in parallel tonight: I backed up the repeat of Brass day 2 from DAB this afternoon, so I should have pretty accurate comparisons there, too, with the FM from Saturday.

I really don't see any reason for this assumption, Richard.  Why would people who haven't heard a piece before take it on themselves to lead the applause?  It strikes me as such a strange thing to do that I'm reluctant to attribute such behaviour to newcomers. 

The average age of concertgoers is quite high but we're not all in our nineties; so there must have been a steady stream of newcomers in the decades since the 'applaud at the end of the symphony' convention became established.  Why didn't the newcomers of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s & 1980s feel the need to applaud between movements?

Mr Kenyon's tired arguments on 'Today' don't make much appeal even if the unconventional applause is being led by people new to orchestral concerts.  Are there really that many people so petulant that they'd be put off by being asked to reserve their appreciation for the end; and would they outnumber the people who'd be put off because they encountered an ambience not so different from the rock concerts of which they were growing tired.  I think the numbers in both groups would be rather insignificant.  I don't think that, as a new audience member in my mid-twenties, I'd have fallen into either category; but the second would have been more likely.  One of the things I really liked as a refugee from rock and folk was that the audiences seemed far more interested in the music than in making a load of noise themselves.