‘Interval’ has a few meanings in music, including the distance between notes and the distance between two halves of a concert. When venues were reopening their doors post-COVID, they were happy to have concerts that ran straight through, avoiding the possibility of a thousand patrons milling around, sipping drinks and exchanging light banter and germs. Now that things are open again, many of those same venues want the interval back.

Wine

Couple Holding Each Other’s Hands While Holding a Wine Glasses. Photo by Marcus Aurelius from Pexels.

I don’t like intervals much as a performer. I’d rather do slightly less music and finish early. Both Classics Unwrapped for Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Music on Sundays for Queensland Symphony Orchestra are all done in about 75 to 80 minutes, which is enough of a duration for the performers’ concentration and the audience’s bladders to remain secure.

I imagine there would have been many tightly-crossed legs in the notorious Beethoven concert at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna in 1808. First of all, it was late December, so the hall was freezing. Secondly, the first half alone...