When I go to a concert I like to write about what I liked or what I really didn't like. Usually they are fairly easy to pin down. What I usually don't write about is what I find okay, mediocre, adequate, generic.
It's a funny thing anyway, subjective. One man's meat another man's gravy etc. I suppose the professional critics must also suffer this, too, although they would never admit it. They are always right. So many factors influence one's opinion. The actual music being performed, the quality of the performance. Ooh, that's a difficult one anyway. If you know a piece extremely well, perhaps through regularly listening to half a dozen or more different recordings, having performed it, having studied the score, perhaps you are able to be more objective. But then, you are only saying that the interpretation coincides - or doesn't - with yours.
Then there's the hall. But even when you feel fairly comfortable with the acoustical strengths and weaknesses, there are still variables in temperature and humidity, and the degree of coughing, fidgeting and chatting from your fellow audience members.
Then there is yourself. Things like tiredness can obviously affect judgement, as can state of mind - are you anxious, depressed, excited, happy - about external life. How are your ears?
And then there's your attitude to the performers. What are your expectations? Are they raised way too high, or suitably lowered. When I am greatly looking forward to seeing a particular favourite performer, I do get terribly terribly nervous. I think I suffer from audience-fright. Strange, because I've never really suffered stage-fright - I just get a bit hyper and over-talkative when I have to perform. And I never like to say anything too critical about performers, because at the end of the day they are human beings, and despite all the maxims about them being professional and the show must go on etc, they are not automatons, that's what makes them artists, and they do have feelings.
I'm rambling aren't I? So I'll cut this short and merely suggest it gets read in the context of the next post, which is not yet written.
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