Whenever people ask me what I’m up to at the weekend, they get the same response. ‘I am going to a concert!’ While my closest friends have by now learned to fake enthusiasm and to make the appropriate cooing noises, certain members of my wider social circle sometimes make the grave mistake of questioning whether going to a concert is really is fun. This behaviour they usually regret immediately because I always take this as an invitation to tell them about the delight that is going to a concert. If you find going to concerts boring, you are doing something terribly wrong. Apart from the music you get to hear (and there really is nothing better than live music), if you know where to look, you can find an amount of drama unfold that would put even the trashiest talk show to shame. Here’s an example.
Last spring, I went to a concert with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Wayne Marshall. What I liked especially about this particular concert was the fact that I was seated in the front row of the auditorium. Admittedly, this is not great acoustically, but it gives you the chance to engage in what a friend of mine calls ‘sock-and-shoe studies’. And oh, what fun that was. While the orchestra members all had perfectly shined shoes and black socks, the soloist – probably in an act of defiance of traditional clothing standards for concerts – wore grey and black stripy socks, which are the second-best kind of socks after polka dot socks. Thus, for the next hour I got to watch his trouser leg ride up his ankles, revealing stripe after stripe until I saw it: a mint green stripe. Meanwhile, the foot of the person seated next to me provided me with entertainment of a different kind. The kindly gentleman tapped his foot and shook his body as if possessed by a demon. While I found this endearing at the beginning, I unashamedly started to hate him about 20 minutes into the concert until an important thought occurred to me: maybe he could not help it. Maybe he was suffering from something like musical Tourette’s Syndrome and was it not much preferable to be seated next to a person tapping his foot than someone emitting swear words?
All these important and entertaining details were unfortunately lost on the friend I had brought with me because she was busy doing what people seated next to me at a concert always do: she coughed her heart out. By now this has happened so often that I always bring a bottle of water with me to give to whoever might be cursed with The Cough at that time. Unfortunately, while I have gotten more prepared, people now have found other means of distracting me. Sleeping and snoring combined with asthma attacks are the preferred methods of distraction these days. However, my friend did not go to these lengths but coughed so pitifully that the people seated behind us did something completely un-Austrian during the break: they talked to us and then offered my friend sweets. When I was just beginning to look for the hidden camera, they said that it really was no problem if she had to cough as long as she only coughed during the loud parts. Would it not be a pity of she spoiled the quiet parts for everyone? I sighed a sigh of relief. Things were back to normal. That is Vienna as I know it.
When I had time to refocus my attention on what was happening on stage, I noticed that one of the violinists right in front of me shredded an unusual amount of bow hair, which upset me quite a bit because whenever I see someone shred bow hair, I can hear my first violin teacher’s voice say, ‘Be careful with your bow. New bow hair costs 70€!’ The violinist next to the guy who took out his aggressions on his bow looked like he was about twelve and had just hit puberty, which caused me to wonder if Suzuki really did the world a favour by starting children on the violin at age two. However, my reverie was soon interrupted when Wayne Marshall sat down at the piano with the soloist and started what I can only refer to as the most epic jam session I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing. I got so carried away with everything that was happening that all of a sudden, I noticed that the unthinkable had happened: I was tapping my foot and shaking my body as if possessed by a demon. Apparently, I had caught musical Tourette’s Syndrome from me neighbour. My friend coughed along happily. This was a loud part, after all.
So, you see, when you know where all the fun lies, there really is nothing more entertaining than going to a classical concert. And this particular time I didn’t even get to upset a member of Austria’s upper class (which is my favourite concert pastime and super easy to do – you just have to turn up a tad underdressed and there will always be a kindly person to draw your attention to the fact that you are NOT welcome in this dishevelled state of yours). But even if I don’t manage to pick a fight with the upper echelons of society (or those who believe to be the upper echelons of society), I usually manage to leave the concert elated. Whatever happens, concerts are one of the few occasions when I am at peace with the world, because if the mind of single person can come up with a symphony, there is still a chance for mankind.
