Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Cell phones... What would you do in this situation?

[EDIT: Sorry, I did not see the other post on this very topic further down]

During a recent Haydn piano concert in Sweden a cell phone rang TWICE ...

Here is a video that shows how the pianist/conductor Christian Zacharias handled the situation the second time the phone rang. Kudos to him for handling it this well!!! Forgetting to turn off your phone in the first place is bad, but letting it go off a second time...

[video:youtube]TAaU8yPXA1A[/video]

Original.

People who stop cold in concerts to "handle" disruptions are the worst. Far greater pianists have endured far worse, and stopping cold not only makes it very awkward, but it demonstrates your inability to deal with the faintest distraction.

I missed that topic. Sorry for the double post.

Interesting point and I understand how you see this. To me this is more about respect and not the ability to handle distractions in itself. People pay a lot of money to go to these concerts and for a person to disrespect the other concert goers and above all, the soloist/orchestra, like this is something I find hard to understand.

One could just as well state that far lesser pianists have refused to endure far less. One could argue that the cell phone disruption has already been awkward. I don't think the issue is black and white.

No! People who have no respect for the composer, the music, or the performer and leave their damned cell phones on or just HAVE to text, or cough, or unwrap a piece of candy, or whatever are the worst.
It isn't about who has endured worse. No one should HAVE to endure this kind of thing. One should not HAVE to deal with distractions. It's ridiculous and anyone stating that the performer is creating an awkward instance if completely off base, since it is the AUDIENCE MEMBER creating the instance! DUH! Anyone with such a mindset, clearly, has no experience performing.

Whew! Coffee tomorrow?

I think we can agree it is the fault of the audience member, but to stop dead in the middle of a piece when you are CLEARLY able to continue is just ridiculous. If you want to play with no distractions, stick to the recordings studio (Or better yet your living room). Even worse are certain world class performers (*Cough* Schiff *Cough* Brendull *Cough*) who stop dead in the middle of concerts and scold the audience for their "misbehavior". Imagine if Hoffmann, Rachmaninoff, Horowitz, Ricter etc. had done such things. (P.s. I have performed quite a bit, but I'm still a high school student so it doesn't count )

A pianist once went seamlessly into an improvisation on the cellphone tune in the same style as the piece being played, then just as seamlessly returned us all to the mood of the program.

The best reminder I heard was just before each concert at the "proms" series.

It starts off as a quiet cellphone sound that gradually gets louder as everyone either looks round in disgust or checks their own phones. Eventually it gets loud enough that it can't be an ordinary phone. Then it stops and everybody realises and is pleasantly reminded. There is always a little laughter.

No words are ever spoken. None needed.

Those pianists performed before cell phones were invented. But, since you're still in high school, you wouldn't have any experience with that kind of world.

They are the best. And the smartest.

Because they know that what they are doing is supported by the majority of people in the audience, and it is a message to any potential miscreants that public humiliation is a distinct possibility if they don't know how to act.

There is always the possibility that the problem person in the audience is getting some perverse and pathological enjoyment from disrupting a concert. I've had the distinct impression a few times that when a person is making noise during a classical concert, it's coming from some kind of infantile need for attention on the part of a vastly over-entitled and self-absorbed idiot. They just can't bear that the person on stage is getting all that wonderful attention, and they are getting none at all. So they make disruptive noises.

I think it said this was the 2nd time the phone went off. I would have let the first time go, but if it happens again? Come on. You can have it on vibrate.

I was planning to type a long and mean reply.

But as I was finishing the post I see you are just a high-schooler. So I abandoned my plan.

Why would that change your reply?

That's quite a stretch. Maybe we should leave that sort of analysis to Mark C.

I think many of these disruptions come from people who are on call. I work in IT, and just like the medical profession, we are often on call 24x7. There is no option to simply leave the cell phone at home, because, in my own case, a response is required within 15 minutes or additional pages will begin escalating to upper management.

But the solution is as simple as Morodiene has said: Turn the damned sound settings to vibrate.

These people need to be put in a mental hospital.

You should look up griefing.

Where people go into games purely to disrupt and annoy other people. This behaviour extends into the real world too.

The 24 hour on-call is not even an excuse, as per your last sentence: set it to vibrate.

I actually turn my smartphone OFF during concerts. How many of the audiences do that?

I don't think TK or griefing is the same. Those people (TKer or griefers) have the intention to irritate and damage normal online gameplay. The anonymity of internet fuels such behavior.

In concert halls, first of all, they are all REAL people with their own face. It's some kind of social gathering. I, till today, still tend to think those people disrupting concerts are mostly not intended to do so, just temporarily forgot to turn the phone off.