Through These Ears

LSO Not So Happy About Gergiev?

On her classical music blog, Jessica Duchen has a post about recent activity by Valery Gergiev.  It concerns the political situation between Russia and Georgia, but that's not what caught my attention.  After the first part of her post, she says this:

"Factions among the LSO players are rumoured to be seriously p***ed off at Gergiev's allegedly somewhat cavalier approach to their rehearsal schedule."

I listened to almost all of his Mahler cycle with them via BBC Radio 3, and the performances have definitely been up and down.  While I really did enjoy a lot of it, there were times when he seemed to be heavily involved in getting some passion out of the orchestra (he's always good at the muscular bits, isn't he?), while at other times he seemed to be miles away.  It was pretty clear that he knew some of the works much better than others, and had more to say about them.

Someone or other said during one of the concert broadcasts remarked that Gergiev seemed to have his head buried in the score.  I commented elsewhere at the time that I noticed some rather "independent" solos here and there, as well as some rather flat moments in the ensemble.  I also remember saying that I couldn't imagine the LSO putting up with that for very long.

Gergiev has long been notorious for his hectic, workaholic schedule.  For years people there have been whispers that this makes him sloppy and unprepared sometimes, but I never heard of any open revolt against it.  The one thing positive I do hear consistently is that he has a great ability to communicate with the orchestra, to get his intentions across and quickly right the ship in times of trouble.  There is also usually praise for his primary concern about making adjustments for the individual acoustics of each concert hall.  But I wonder how long he can continue to counter the bad feelings about his chronic lateness and abrupt rehearsal methods?

Even in the top orchestras the players don't usually have the power to veto a guest conductor.  If anyone can, though, it's the truly independent LSO.  We'll see what happens.

Another Way To Do Media Criticism

Norman Lebrecht has a very interesting post on his "Slipped Disc" blog on ArtsJournal.com:

In a critical condition (5)

Now that we're past the mourning period over the dismissal (for that's what it was) of so many music and arts critics in the last few months, it's time to look at what can be done now, and in the near future.  Lebrecth's key paragraphs:

"A newspaper that cherishes and promotes its critics - as The Scotsman does, for instance, during the Edinburgh Festival - offers readers a reliable benchmark against which they can measure their own reactions and opinions to things they have seen and heard. The Scotsman deploys its critical team strategically in festival time as a way of setting itself apart from the range of free newspapers that flood the city streets.

In Salzburg, likewise, the local Nachrichten is read more closely during festival time than any of the national or international papers because its critics provide a clearer context day by day of events in the present festival against triumphs of the past. Their value cannot be measured purely in payroll terms."

This got me thinking further along the lines of innovative ways to report on music.  I've already had some thoughts about this, but I'm going to take it a step further.  The combination of my earlier idea about posting audio and video clips to generate interest in an upcoming concert and the way Lebrecht describes the approaches of The Scotsman and the Nachrichten brings to mind another genre of journalism (the topical critical writing kind, I mean): sports coverage.

In sports, the local writers always do a little piece about tonight's game, discussing key match-ups, possible strategies, injuries, and other things fans think about in anticipation of a game.  I say that Classical Music fans have very similar thoughts before attending a concert.  It's an interesting parallel:  Why do we go to a ballgame?  Because we're interested in the kind of ball being played, and at least one of the players or teams involved.  We root for a good result for our favorites.  We're elated when they do well, and disappointed when they don't.  Our passions can be piqued by a good pre-game report which hits on key points.

Why do we go to a concert?  Because we're interested in the kind of music being played, and usually one of the players or ensembles involved.  We root for a good performance, especially of the one work we wanted to hear.  We're elated when it goes well, and disappointed when it doesn't.  But our passions aren't piqued by a good pre-concert report, because there aren't any, unless it's a general interview with some bigshot hitting town, or a composer's birthday overview.  None of that does what a pre-game sports piece does, though.  All we get are dry details on the concert listings page.  To continue my restaurant analogy from a previous post, we're expected to look at the menu and alreay know how everything tastes.

So why not up the ante with music reviews?  Surely there can be a little space somewhere for three hundred words about an up-coming concert which discusses something interesting about the program.  It could even be something similar to what many of us think before deciding whether or not to go to a concert.  Is there a special moment in one of the pieces we really ought to hear?  Does the conductor or soloist do well with this repertoire, or is does the visiting band have the best brass section ever and you have to go hear them?  There are all kinds of things that can be brought up, and with just a few words.  If there's no more room in the Amazing Shrinking Newspaper, then put something on the paper's website.  That can't be too hard to do.  From there people can sign up for email or text notices, etc.  Online journals, bloggers, etc., can do this now.  After all, it's not like nobody knows what they're going to review until the last minute.  Concerts are often scheduled even farther in advance than the current season.  If the critic doesn't know too far in advance, the editor who makes the assignment sure does, or ought to.  What I'm saying is that this can be done without making any adjustments.

It's time to move beyond thinking about concert reviews as news items to be reported on only after the incident has taken place.  It's also time to move beyond the mindset that basic publicity techniques needn't be used for this kind of music, and that the audiences won't respond.  Perhaps newspapers don't care anymore, but there are plenty of music writers out there who do.  Taking a more well-rounded approach to covering concerts is an important next step.

Elliott Carter's Recent Works At Tanglewood - Online Video

The Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival have generously made performances available online of several recent works (plus the  the Double Concerto for Piano and Harpsichord from 1961) by Elliott Carter.  The performers are all Festival Orchestra players and resident Fellows at Tanglewood, and the footage comes from a few concerts at "The Shed".  These are full performances, not extracts, and in fine quality.

Carter's music from the last ten years has gotten my attention more than his output from the last 50 years combined, including the Double Concerto.

Tanglewood WebTV

There's a drop-down menu at the bottom to go to the different videos.

The Concert Hall Is Not Like A Restaurant

It has long been my view that programming non-Classical works during a concert season is a problematic way to bring new audiences to Classical Music.  From the revenue-centric perspective of a venue or production organization, it does make sense.  Revenue is revenue, and we should all be happy if money is coming in from concerts of movie music and Broadway numbers to subsidize the music we're really interested in.  But that doesn't really bring new audiences to Classical Music.

This is what I call treating the concert hall like a restaurant.  It generally doesn't work, because people who go to a Pops concert or "An Evening with John Williams" don't tend to think to themselves afterwards, "Hey, that was good - let's go back next month and try something else on the menu".  Unless the non-Classical draw is programmed with "serious" concert music, very few will make the association between the server and the meal.

The same thing can be said about mixing non-Classical music in the Classical category on record labels and sales charts.  When Peter Gelb put the "Titanic" soundtrack on the Sony Classical ledger, it went to the top of the Billboard chart and made plenty of money for the division.  While this brought in some nice income to subsidize the serious music on the label, it was nothing more than a bit of accounting prestidigitation, and not an actual method of bringing new audiences to Classical Music.

So this is all fine and good for the profit center, but does little to get people to come to the other concerts.  Mixing genres in one program, however, is a different matter.  Having movie music or the like share the bill with more "serious" concert music will give the segment of the audience who came to hear the movie themes a chance to hear something which is part of the regular menu, so to speak.  Only then can they know if it's worth coming back or not.

In fact, this kind of audience is more likely to be receptive to more modern music than they would be to Mostly Mozart or Brahms #3.  The language of so much film music today is lifted directly from a lot of different 20th Century composers.  In fact, much of it used to be written by actual 20th Century composers, or at least people who were fully qualified to be so.  A quick glance at this list of significant film composers (by no means complete) shows a number of composers known at least as much for their concert music, if not more so:  Malcolm Arnold, Georges Auric, John Corigliano, Wojciech Kilar, Erich W. Korngold, Miklos Rosza, or Mikis Theodorakis.  What this means is that the more modern language of contemporary Classical Music will already be familiar to them.  This is an important point, and one about which I'll have more to say at another time.

The same thing can be said for what I think can be the next big draw for non-Classical Music fans:  video game soundtracks.  I'm not talking about the cutesy kiddie ones, but the interesting and sophisticated music for the more mature games.  War games and the big adventure games tend to have full-blooded orchestral scores, as well as music that would be considered elctronic or electro-acoustic if it were to come from the hallowed halls of a music conservatory.  There are already quite a few CDs for sale with this music, and they sell well.  It's not surprising when one considers that "Halo 3" was the biggest selling media release of all time, bigger than any record or movie release.  There are huge audiences out there who will happily attend concerts of video game music, in large numbers.  It's already happening in Europe and Asia.   This music is also heavily steeped in the language of modern composers, although the war games tend to have their more old-fashioned "war-movie music moments".  But audiences eat that up as well.

What this means is that programming along these lines gives many more opportunities to create that connection between Classical Music and the music they already like.  That's how taste barriers begin to break down.

Matthew Greenbaum Explains A Language We Didn't Know We Knew: Normative Dada

I missed this before, but I'm glad I found it now.  Composer Matthew Greenbaum has a fascinating piece on NewMusicBox which traces the threads of Dada and Surrealism from the early European avant-garde through to the "chance music" and experimentalism of the contemporary American music scene.  He also touches on the very human threads which are woven into this history.

Greenbaum convincingly demonstrates that much of what we think of as risky and original isn't either one of those things.

Read the whole thing here.

Learn about Matthew Greenbaum's own music on his website.

Marc-André Hamelin Champions Busoni, As I Heard It

I had the pleasure of hearing one of the superstars of the piano world on the radio the other day.  WDR3 had a concert by Marek Janowski conducting the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, which featured Hamelin playing a beast seen or heard rarely - Ferrucio Busoni's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with Male Chorus, Op. 39.

The program opened with two shorter works, as the Busoni is huge.  First up was a hauntingly beautiful account of The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives.  This was minimalism at its most poignant (yes, I know Ives wasn't a "Minimalist"), as Janowski had the strings softly shift their pitches in a way that made me think of Arvo Pärt, or even Gavin Bryars's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet.  As usual, Ives was ahead of his time in so many ways, even in quiet, contemplative moments.  Janowski kept the balance just right, allowing each of the three main voices to speak clearly and independently.  It's a simple enough soundworld on its face, but it's very easy to forget that simplicity when thinking of Ives.  As a miniature (for that's what it really is), it has its own integrity, and can't be played as if it's waiting for the next piece, which some conductors seem to do. Janowski understood that.

On the other side of this coin was Webern's Im Sommerwind, a piece which I don't remember hearing before.  It's one of those early works I come across while browsing through recordings, or looking at programs of upcoming concerts I'm probably not going to attend.  This work is not a miniature, but rather comes across as a young composer trying to find his way in the heady, lush post-Romantic world of Vienna at the beginning of the 20th Century.  Webern wrote this around the same time as his

Big, sweeping orchestral gestures and throbbing chords are the rule of the day, but without a whole lot of reasons for them to be there.  Schoenberg noticed that apparently, and told Webern to stick to smaller forces like the string quartet.  The problem is that Webern's musical ideas just didn't last long enough, or have the same force of direction that the big Strauss/Mahler orchestral sound demands.  It almost sounds like he took snippets of other famous works in the genre, with the resulting impression of half-remembered dreams and incomplete thoughts. There are even a couple of chords from the opening Frühling movement of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs, which was written more than forty years later.

The piece comes across in the end as a bit of a hodge-podge effort, although Janowski gave it his full support.  The Zurich musicians played as if they believed in the music as well, so it had the best shot it's going to get.

After the miniatures, Hamlein took the stage for a work that I almost never hear.  Part of the reason is that it's a big work, requiring serious rehearsal, along with fitting in the male choir, which needs its own rehearsal time.  Obviously the logistics and pitfalls of programming and concert scheduling prevent this from being performed too often.  Also, Busoni isn't really a name most audience members will run to hear, unless it's preceded by "Bach/". 

It's a massive work, and Busoni throws in almost every gesture he can think of.  Hamelin, naturally, was wonderful.  He is the classic example of a musician for whom astonishing technique is merely his toolbox.  His musicality comes from a deep understanding of the possibilities of his instrument combined with a wide-ranging intelligence and appreciation for the music he plays.  I've heard a couple of different recordings of this piece over the years (this one by Garrick Ohlsson and the original one from John Ogdon), and never appreciated it too much.  Even though both pianists were/are terrific, the work itself never had enough overall coherence or interesting things to say.  Or so I thought, anyway.

Hamelin has lived with this piece for quite some time, and abouth ten years ago he made what is supposed to be an amazing recording of it on the Hyperion label.  I'm sure his interpretation has grown even deeper since then (but I think I'll have to get it now, especially with the Hyperion sound quality), and this performance showed.  Whole passages which normally sound bombastic and overblown suddenly take on new, genuine emotions.  Runs which are normally just busywork become intelligent, crystal clear musical statements.  I could go on and on with superlatives and fancy concert review terms, but suffice to say that Busoni never had it so good.  There's much more going on here than I realized in the past, and everyone involved deserved the rousing applause they got, and then some.

Quite stunning, and a testament to Hamlin's musical powers.  He finished the concert with a nice little arrangement of Charles Trenet's "En Avril à Paris" (arranged for piano by another virtuoso, Alexis Weissenberg).  Hamelin has long been perhaps the world's greatest champion of overlooked and underappreciated piano music, and is without question one of the finest pianists around today, if not ever.  Anyone interested in learning more about him can start here and here.  I forget if he's exclusive to Hyperion or not, but here's a list of his recording on that label.

And here's a little YouTubage of Hamelin doing a little Godowsky/Chopin.

CBC Follows Fashion Down to the Lowest Common Demoninator...

...or at least, this is how it starts:

CBC to announce Radio 2 remake in pursuit of younger audience (found via the well tempered blog)

The excuse to drastically reduce Classical Music to the office-and-housework background music slot (10am - 3pm) is the usual one:  the kids don't like it, and the station needs to attract listeners.  However, the wrinkle in this argument is The State Broadcaster's Obligation, which is.....what, exactly?

The ideal behind all government funding of the arts (which is essentially what CBC 2 or BBC 3 or RTBF Musique 3) is that it's a good thing for the government to provide arts to the people.  Obviously there is a direct legacy in Europe from the private orchestras of princes and archbishops to the modern concept of state-funded orchestras and opera companies.  But there is still the idea that the art of music (Classical, in this case) has cultural value, and there is a benefit to society in promoting it.

With this ideal as the basis for Radio 2's brodcasting of Classical Music, what happens when the culture no longer appreciates the value?  Either the State continues to spend taxpayer money on something most taxpayers don't use or want (which never stopped any government before), or they shift that funding to something which will get the listeners' attention.

The main argument that we always hear whenever government funding is taken away from Classical Music is the one voiced by Ian Morrison, spokesman for the watchdog group "Friends of Canadian Broadcasting":

The Radio Two makeover is also a departure from CBC's mandate as defined by the Canadian Broadcasting Act, said Mr. Morrison.

"The Canadian public broadcaster has a responsibility to transmit world classical culture to new generations of Canadians," he said. "They are substantially moving away from that responsibility. They falsely assume that world classical culture is not something that can be marketed to appeal to younger audiences."

The CBC Mandate doesn't say anything about which artforms the broadcaster is required to promote or support.  There is, however, plenty of language here and elsewhere in the Program Policies about the organziation's obligation to promote Canadian culture, and to help maintain it.  While that's certainly a pretty broad canvas, it's hard to prove that Classical Music in general is expressly protected.  Now, there is probably a solid argument for government support of Classical Music organizations which have been around long enough to become cultural institutions, such as the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, or the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.  However, the CBC was most certainly in violation of that policy when they decided to disband the CBC Radio Orchestra.

A main part of that orchestra's mission - and rightly so - was the promotion of music by Canadian composers.  It's no surprise that once the beancounters at the CBC took the position that this part of Canadian culture was no longer of value, they would next devalue the artform itself.

But is the CBC's obligation to a specific artform, or to the public which pays for it?  Obviously, Classical Music fans are going to hold the position that the high arts are beneficial to society, much more so than pop music.  Sadly, the programmers seem to have redefined their mandate from providing the public with (musical) culture to just enlarging their audience share.  In other words, the goal is now ratings, not to promote culture.  Once we switch to "giving the audience what they want", then Mr. Morrison's claim that the CBC's responsibility is to market Classical music to the younger audience they seek is irrelevant.

The problem is that Mr. Morrison's interpretation is based on public tastes from 1932.  Back then, Classical Music was mainstream, and there was nothing like the competition for everyone's ears like there is today.  It was an Important Cultural Artform, and was very much connected to the mostly European origins of Canadians of the time.  It still is, of course, but the younger generations just don't learn about it.  Worse, the artform itself has become devalued in certain academic circles by post-modern relativist influences due to those very European origins.  Then there is the "elitist" charge that Classical Music comes from the world of princes and archdukes, and is therefore no longer as relevant in today's more democratic society.

But it's really all about the ratings.  We're hearing the same noises from the British public about the BBC, which is behaving more like a commercial institution than one interested in providing public service.  The bosses at both believe that they can only justify their existence by the size of their audience.  Quality programming equals quantity of eyeballs and/or ears to them, so "culture" becomes relevant.  Or, even irrelevant.  Of course, catering to the lowest common denonimator also renders the original ideals behind the CBC Mandate irrelevant.

Classical Music radio audiences are dwindling, and the CBC chose to go elsewhere for those ears, rather than to try to bring them back.  This phenomenon is everywhere these days.  I know, I know, it's more due to lousy programming and poor marketing and all those other reasons.  But culturally, the CBC bosses have made a decision.  The artform I call Classical Music is not as important to them as pop culture because it cannot match those audience numbers. 

The only way to beat this is to prove that there is in fact a substantial audience for Classical Music.  That can only be done online, through internet radio, blogging, and webcasting.  Once the numbers are there, the CBC and the rest of them come crying back home in pursuit of ratings.  But by then it will be too late, because they will have probably already rendered themselves irrelevant.

Parsifal at Bayreuth - Wagner Mad Libs?

The Mostly Opera blog has a great roundup of this year's production of Parsifal at Bayreuth.  I actually liked the broadcast of the premier I heard on the radio.  But it looks like I should be grateful I didn't have to watch it:

No controversy in Stefann Herheim's new Bayreuth Parsifal: Myriads of Ideas, but ultimately disappointing

Judging from this description, with supporting evidence from several reviews (also collected on the Mostly Opera blog), this sounds like one of those Mad Libs.  I guess I'm even more glad I didn't pay the $80 to see it on-line. Maybe next year.

In hindsight, I wonder if audience was actually hissing at either the orchestra or at Gatti for his rather glacial pacing, which caused the horns to bleat badly at the end of Act I?  Unless, as I suspected at the time, the musicians didn't like what he was doing, and showed him.

Interesting Radio Broadcasts This Week

(Info mostly culled from The Classical Concert Webcast Page)

Aug.19   4:05am - 5:35am EDT  on Ö1 (Rebroadcast of Aug. 9 concert from the Festival Allegro Vivo)

Joaquin Turina:  La oración del torero, Op. 34

Roland Batik:  "On the Move" for Jazz Trio and String Orchestra

Erich Wolfgang Korngold:  Symphonic Serenade in B, Op. 39

Roland Batik, piano
Woody Schabata, marimba & vibes
Heinrich Werkl, bass
Academia Allegro Vivo
Bijan Khadem-Missagh, cond.

2:00pm - 4:30pm  on WDR3 (from the Zürcher Festspiel)

Charles Ives:  "The Unanswered Question"

Anton Webern:  "In Sommerwind"

Ferrucio Busoni:  Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with Male Chorus, Op 39 - Marc-André Hamelin, piano

Charles Trenet:  "En Avril à Paris" (arr. for piano by Alexis Weissenberg) - Marc-André Hamelin, piano

Herren des Schweizer Kammerchors
Tonhalle Orchester Zürich
Marek Janowski, cond.

 Aug. 21   11:00pm - 12:00am EDT  on KUAT-FM (Rebroadcast from the Spoleto Chamber Music Series)

Michael Torke:  "The Telephone Book", Movements 1 & 2
Tara Helen O'Connor, flute; Todd Palmer, clarinet; Daniel Phillips, violin; Edward Arron, cello; Steve Prutsman, piano

Charles Wuorinen:  Glogauer Liederbuch
Tara Helen O'Connor, flute; Todd Palmer, clarinets; Daniel Phillips, viola; Edward Arron, cello

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor:  Clarinet Quintet in f#, Op. 10
Todd Palmer, clarinet; St. Lawrence String Quartet

Aug. 22  2:05pm - 4:00pm EDT  on MDR Figaro

Hanns Eisler:  Deutsche Sinofnie, Op. 50

Claire Singer, soprano
Margarete Joswig, alto
Nikolay Borchev, baritone
Friedemann Röhlig, bass
Thomas Thieme & Matthias Reichwald, speakers
Leipzig Gewandhaus Choir
Ernst Senff Choir, Berlin
Staatskapelle Weimar
Lothar Zagrosek, cond.

2:05pm - 6:00pm EDT  on NDR Kultur

Karlheinz Stockhausen at 80:  Birthday Celebration

Works Include:  "Kontra-Punkte", 15 Textkompositionen für intuitive Musik, KLANG – 7. Stunde: Balance für Bassklarinette, Englischhorn und Flöte, and other work

More program info here.

How to Stop Clapping Between Movements

I've been hearing a lot lately about that perennial annoyance of audience members clapping in between movements of a piece.  Maybe it's just that it's summer festival time, some of which bring out many more casual listeners, or even people who aren't into Classical Music at all, leading to an extra amount of inappropriate clapping.  But is it actually inappropriate? 

Yes, and no.  First of all, the tradition of sitting quietly in between movements is not as old as the Classical Music concert itself.  The structure of a concert program has changed dramatically since Beethoven's time.  Not only that, but the relationship between audience and musician has gone through an even more dramatic transformation.  Once music was largely liberated from royal courts and the direct rule of princes and bishops, performers and listeners alike gained a great deal of freedom. Audiences used to demand that a premiered work be played again - not after the rest of the program was over, but immediately.  What contemporary composer wouldn't kill for such enthusiasm to be permitted?  The audience had much more power when it wanted.  Today, "encore!" means we want the performer to play anything he or she likes after finishing with the scheduled program.  And we hope we can hear the name of the encore chosen - if the performer bothers to mention it at all.  

And let's not forget that, from the perspective of instrumental music fans who have to sit on their hands, opera fans clap constantly.  They get to clap and show their enthusiasm after every aria, and get to praise their favorites individually after every act.  And that's without going into what some Italian opera audiences will do.

"In any Italian opera house, let alone La Scala at the start of the season, audiences tend to be vocal about vocal failure. If someone fails to sing a favourite passage quite well enough, the audience will talk about it there and then. There will be a buzz of distress and a general muttering."

So opera fans get to do it, but the rest of the Classical Music audience doesn't.  That's totally unfair, if you ask me.

With this in mind, I have some thoughts about a way to re-establish the kind of performer-listener connection which can serve to give more power back to the audience.

I think people who object to applause between movements fall into two categories:  those who hate the interruption to their reverie ("It destroys the atmosphere and ruins the continuity."), and those who are annoyed that the clappers just think the piece ended so are clapping as a Pavlovian response.  I'm guilty of being bothered by the latter, and am sympathetic to the former. I do believe it's important that people understand the basics of what's going on at a concert.  As it becomes increasingly more common for a conductor or performer to give an informative talk about the music being performed, there is room for a mention about applause, and when a piece actually ends, rather than a movement.  I say this can be done without condescension, or making anyone feel uncomfortable.  We've also had program notes for over two centuries, so why not take advantage of those captive eyeballs as well?

It goes without saying that there is plenty of noise from the audience in between movements, much of which can be at least as irritating, and can "destroy the atmosphere and ruin the continuity" as much as applause after the second movement.  Coughing I can deal with, especially since that only gets worse when held in for too long.  I'm also one of those people who will talk (quietly!) to his neighbor about what we've just heard.  All other avenues of expression having been denied, that's often the only way one can enjoy the moment of a particularly excellent inner movement.  I can think of a number of occasions when, after a piece had finished, I felt that I was really applauding only for an earlier movement, and was not that impressed with the rest of the performance.  Because applause can only be applied to the entire piece, the performer is denied the opportunity to receive feedback on any special moments during the proceedings, and the audience member is, in a sense, denied the opportunity to show his or her true feelings. 

I believe it is possible to allow for some audience feedback in between movements without unduly disturbing the "atmosphere", or allowing anyone to think the piece has ended when it hasn't.  This is something I've been thinking about for a very long time, and have experimented with a little bit when I've been involved in performing music:

Tell the audience that it has become traditional to hold applause until the end of the entire piece, pointing out that each movement, while (usually) beginning and ending with silence, is really part of a whole, a larger picture.  The applause at the end is for the whole thing.  However, in the past, it was acceptable for the audience to show its approval - or disapproval - of any part of the performance.  Since applause has become the universal signal (in Classical Music) that a piece has ended, another gesture should take its place.  Ask the orchestra to do the "foot shuffle" they do to show appreciation for exceptional soloists, and then tell the audience to give it a try.  All musicians know this is a sign of approval.  Composers might also appreciate the feedback on inner movements.  However, it must be pointed out from the outset that this is optional, and should not be automatic, or too much.

It's the easiest thing for the audience to do as well.  No worrying about where to put the program one has been holding (which inevitably falls to the floor), no need to put the purse down, or let go of one's companion's hand, or anything like that.  It's also a gesture that just can't be done too loudly, and won't "break the mood" too much at all. 

The educational level of this little spiel can be tailored to the knowledge level of the audience.  If, for example, the audience is savvy, then there's no need to do anything except suggest the shuffle.

Surely even if an audience of 2000 did this, it wouldn't be as bad as the noise that goes on in some places.  If anything, a mass foot shuffle would help to mask the uglier noises people make.  I think a few (very) low murmurs of approval, sort of like they do after a solo turn in a jazz number, could also be acceptable, although there will be a bit of a learning curve on that to find out what's tasteful or not.  Care must be taken that this, too, does not become a Pavlovian response.  As long as it's offered to the audience as optional, it shouldn't be too bad.

With a little pre-concert instruction, done from the perspective that this is about giving the audience more freedom and control over their experience, I think it can be done.