The musicians may pause between big sections to refocus their energy or to retune before playing the next part. Eventually, when the whole piece is over, the audience claps, and the conductor turns toward the audience to accept the applause.
Then the conductor leaves the stage. If the applause keeps going, the conductor will come return to the stage. He or she may ask the orchestra or individual players to stand to share the applause. Then the conductor will exit again, but he or she will return for more bows as long as applause continues. After all of this clapping and bowing, entering and exiting, the conductor finally ends up offstage, while the orchestra and audience get ready for the next piece.
Sometimes some furniture has to be rearranged, or some players have to be added or subtracted. Sometimes the stage crew has to rearrange furniture, or players have to add themselves in or take themselves out. Eventually, when everybody is ready, the conductor will come onstage again to lead the next piece.
An orchestra is a flexible idea, not a standardized group of instruments. In a chamber music concert or a recital, there is usually no conductor, so the musicians do all the bowing and walking in and out. The orchestra for opera and ballet is usually not onstage, but in the orchestra pit in front of the stage. After the orchestra has tuned, the audience claps for the arrival, in the pit, of the conductor.
Opera and ballet have lots of quirky rituals. The most surprising ritual is that the story may be interrupted without warning for the taking of bows. The performers may break character to accept the applause, or they may freeze while the audience claps, and then return to the action. When the curtain comes down at intermission time, the main performers sometimes come through the curtain to take a bow.
Most performances have an intermission in the middle, a chance for performers and audience to take a break. The musicians leave the stage; you may leave your seat. You will know that intermission is almost over when the lights dim in the lobbies, or when bells or announcements sound. If all the clapping and bowing at a classical concert seems peculiar and oldfashioned, it might help to think of a concert as an energy exchange. The musicians send out musical energy, which the audience receives.
At the end of a piece, it is time for the audience to give something back by clapping, and time for the musicians to receive it, by bowing. An audience can show extra enthusiasm for the performers by standing up while they applaud. Nowadays people generally respond politely to classical music concerts, but just a couple of generations ago things were much wilder.
A new composition could cause a riot, or its composer might be carried through the streets in triumph. Even today, singers at a certain Italian opera house have to be ready to dodge produce thrown by the audience.
Keyword Search in Albums. My wife and I took some friends to a symphony concert. They had never been in a concert hall before, and scarcely knew what to pay attention to! While we were clapping after the first piece, the conductor turned to the audience, bowed, and left the stage.
As a musician, I love it when the audience gets excited and makes a big racket at clapping time. So, people finish, bow, acknowledge the audience, exit gracefully. If applause keeps going with sufficient enthusiasm, go back out, rinse, repeat. The repeated exits are to give the audience a chance to stop clapping without being rude.
This mainly becomes silly, as you're mentioning, because people start counting the number of bows as an indicator of quality of performance.
Then you get people who rush offstage prematurely and back on in order to "force" more bows than their playing may have actually merited. The "weak bladder marathon". I agree with you that it's awkward to leave in dead silence, but I never said wait until no one is clapping. In the other hand, I've heard several times that it's not nice to leave the stage when people is clapping. So I guess pros should leave when the applause is vanishing, and I think there should be no leave and enter because it's weird, or may be just once if people is going all crazy, jumping all around the seats because of the epicness with champagne all over the place, hahahaha.
Also, encores are done when the performer has time and energy left, because as I've said, I don't think any of the public would say "oh, totally not deserves an encore, his musicality was very poor", hahahahaha. He is away from the platform for a noticeable few minutes during which time the strings occupy themselves with an elaborate retune until he returns - or is he leaving in order to give goed time for the re-tuning?
Once or twice is OK I think. An Encore can also be dependent on time I suppose. If the conductor talks too much between pieces, there may not be enough time left before the players fall into overtime, which means extra costs to the orchestra. Exiting the stage is a cue to the audience either that they can let the applause dissipate or if they enjoyed the performance they should keep clapping to bring the performers back out again.
Two curtain calls is about standard for a solid performance. Han N. Over here, it is pretty standard for the audience to give a standing ovation at the end of the program, both with amateur and professional performers. I personally think that it's a silly convention; if you always stand up, then there is nothing left for that one in a hundred truly amazing performance. Standing ovations have succumbed to grade inflation. It's especially silly when they are combined with the "walking ovation" people exiting while the applause is still going on.
When I'm in orchestra I just about manage to haul myself to my feet when the conductor waves us to stand. There is a reason why certain otherwise ephemeral performances live on in the memory, decade after decade, and it is invariably down to that figure on the podium — the eternal giver of rhythm, doing so much more than just waving their hands in the air….
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. Counterpoint Classical music. What does a conductor actually do? Share using Email. By Clemency Burton-Hill 31st October Clemency Burton-Hill finds out how conductors translate their visions into glorious sounds. Be a conduit Concertgoers may have their ears trained on the orchestra, but our eyes are invariably drawn to the podium.
Put in the hours Conductors may look like they have an easier ride, not having to master any fiendish passages of finger-work like the violinists, say, or risk the exposure and split notes of the wind and brass players.
Be a figurehead A music director or chief conductor that is, a conductor on a permanent, long-term contract with an orchestra can be responsible for much more than just how a concert turns out. Immortalise a performance Classical music is unique among musical forms in that the same works, many of which are hundreds of years old, get performed and recorded again and again, often many times each year.
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