We often think that all the magic in a performance happens on the stage, but I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that the excitability of the audience is as much to do with a successful concert as the performers themselves. 

Recently we had two packed houses at the Sydney Opera House for the Australian version of the Last Night of the Proms. In our Australian way, we have none of the other concerts of that great London festival, so our first night is also our Last Night. On a Friday in Sydney, I walked out as conductor and already you could tell that the audience was ready to combust. It was like dense bushland with tinder dry leaves and dead wood littered everywhere, waiting for a match in order to burst into life. You can tell from the way you enter. If the applause is warm with a few whoops and you have to wait for them to calm down before you start, you know you are on to a winner. If on the other hand the audience barely claps long enough to get you to the podium, and you turn around in silence to acknowledge the applause after it has actually finished, you could be in for a slow night. 

This audience was fired up and by the time we got to the jaunty English pomp and circumstance, there was flag waving , hooting, stomping and all the things you don’t normally associate with classical music. By the end of the concert the cheering, streamer throwing and whooping had gone further than I’d ever seen in the Concert Hall. I hasten to point out this was nothing much to do with me, the audience was simply ready to have a good time even before the SSO had walked on to the stage. 

There is that old adage – “dance as if no-one is watching”. Up the back of the Concert Hall were a couple who were dancing as if not only no-one was watching, they danced as if no-one else existed, as if they were Adam and Eve alone in the garden of Eden with an early biblical radio playing the Pomp and Circumstance March no 1 by Elgar, and the snake lurking nearby watching on with distaste. 

This aloneness was surprising given they were in full view of about 2500 other humans. They were enjoying the music in that delightful way that children enjoy music, using dance as self-expression. Maybe orchestras should encourage this, rip out some of the formal seating and have interpretive dance areas, where people could self-express all over the floor to the music of Mahler and Beethoven. (But now, having imagined the scene, perhaps not) 

The audience for the same concert on the following Sunday was always going to be more quiet – it was an afternoon, they weren’t as drunk, they didn’t have that TGIF-let-your-hair-down madness.  But although they started more slowly, at the end they wanted more encores, they
positively BAYED for them with the sound of hungry wolves closing in on weakened prey. Encores are funny things, they are like extra servings of food that performers prepare and are usually dished out whether the audience wants them or not. Sometimes I’ve been dismayed as an audience member when a performer mistakes good-natured applause for a desire for more music. “Damn, he’s going to play another one”, just when I thought that we are all about to be let out. 

An audience is like the waves at the beach. Sometimes performers sit on their boards in the calm, waiting patiently for a swell that will never come. Other times, waves of audience energy roll in and make the journey so exciting and easy. The next time you go to a concert remember that you are a big part of the success of the night. Make some noise, whoop a little, and like BBQ firelighters, you will ignite those around you, everyone will have a better time, and the performers will come off stage saying, “Did you HEAR that woman in the fourth row?!”