Brian Rudman: Did you enjoy that? Well, don't make a noise about it

The old warning about being careful what you wish for came true for me on Saturday night. Only a week ago I was encouraging people to use the Auckland Festival as the perfect way to get out and experience new entertainments.

I didn't think for a moment it would mean the hordes would descend on the town hall for the Eroica Trio's chamber music concert and commit the cardinal sin of clapping between every movement.

Worse, the young - and mainly female - clappers remained oblivious to the error of their ways. Bringing their wine glasses into the hall was unsettling enough. As were the whispered conversations about the slinky silver lame dresses the musicians were wearing. But it was the incessant applause that had us old fuddy-duddies standing around afterwards wondering when the world was going to end.

Music at classical concerts is usually divided into three or four movements, with a pause between each. You don't clap until the end. Newbies who transgress the convention are generally embarrassed into silence after their first enthusiastic outburst, when they realise the rest of the audience is maintaining a church-like stillness.

But on Saturday the world turned upside down. Not only did they keep clapping, but afterwards, they queued up at the stage door for autographs. Will classical music survive the popularity?

The musicians seemed to take it in good part, smiling benignly at each interruption. My quick research on the subject suggests musicians through the ages on the whole rather like such signs of life from the audience and that the habit of sitting in silence, refusing to respond to the emotional tug of the music, is a singularly second-half of the 20th century act of self-denial.

Mozart, for example, wrote after the 1778 premiere of his Paris Symphony, that he'd included a passage in the middle of the first movement that "I was sure would please" and as planned "all the listeners went into raptures over it - applauded heartily. But, as when I wrote it, I was quite aware of its Effect, I introduced it once more towards the end - and it was applauded all over again."

Composer Edward Elgar's wife noted in her diary after the Manchester premiere of his first symphony, that "after 3rd movement E. had to go up on platform & whole Orch. & nos. of audience stood up - Wonderful scene." And that with another movement to go.

Famous violinist Hilary Hahn in her blog writes "applause between movements shows excitement. Moving to the music is natural. Snoring - well, that happens (as it did tonight in every slow movement) ..."

Writing after a Milan concert last year, her big complaint were the two men video-recording the concert. She felt "invaded" and asked them to stop.

This year, the conductor of pianist Stephen Hough's concert with the San Francisco Symphony invited the audience to clap after the first movement if they enjoyed it. Says Hough: "To experience passively something which is moving, touching, exciting or thrilling demands some active outlet if we're not to burst."

He adds that "there are certain movements in the repertoire that absolutely demand applause [but] ... sometimes the conductor is so determined to stamp out the public's enthusiasm that he or she will start the final movement without a breath, with the applause still ringing in the auditorium."

One such incident occurred at the gala Nobel Prize awards concerts last December in Stockholm when the King and the brightest minds in the world had the temerity to clap between movements of Dvorak's 7th Symphony, "much to the annoyance" says one report, of conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

Chamber Music New Zealand, which hosted Saturday's concert, advises patrons via its website to save their applause until the work's end because "for many musicians and listeners the movements create a mood that contributes to the overall feel of the piece of music so should not be interrupted." However "if you are so incredibly affected by a movement and cannot suppress spontaneous applause, do not panic. No one is going to ask you to leave for being
enthusiastic."

Not for now anyway ...