Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin had to intervene after cell phone ringtones during a concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra on Saturday.
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“Is it possible to live a damn hour without a phone?” He launched towards the Verizon Hall audience after stopping the orchestra’s musicians in the full rendition of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9.
In a quiet passage at the beginning of the third movement of this 1903 work by the Austrian composer, the telephone rang.
This was a second interruption by a ringing smartphone. The first occurred during the interpretation of this very work.
At the first bell, the Quebec conductor asked the orchestra to play briefly before continuing with the interpretation.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin told the public during his speech that people in the room had paid to have an experience and that the phones could wait, he pointed out in a text published Sunday in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The concert dedicated to works by Bruckner with four soloists and the Philadelphia Symphony Choir could then be continued without interruption.
- Hear how director Serge Denoncourt reacts to Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s intervention in his interview on Sophie Durocher’s show QUB radio :
Training
In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Yannick Nézet-Séguin said he abandoned the concert after a fourth phone ring.
“I think this phenomenon is related to the arrival of a new audience that we like to see at our concerts. We try to welcome them by making them understand the power of being together in a moment of silence and total focus on the music,” he added.
The goal, he said, is to provide audiences with the best possible experience, which is impossible to achieve with the distractions of everyday life related to cell phones.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin admitted that his tone when addressing the audience was perhaps a little impatient.
“I can’t blame them, but the main thing is to educate the people who come to our concerts, even if I don’t like that word. After my intervention I felt that everyone was more focused and the applause after the concert testified to that. I believe that we can welcome a new audience while making them embrace the rituals of the concert,” he specified.
In April 2022, the Quebec chef had to interrupt the concert he was conducting with the Rotterdam Philharmonic because of a mobile phone ringing.
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