A moment of crisis at the Orchestra (3rd comment)

Something unusual occurred at Saturday night's Philadelphia Orchestra concert, apparently unnoticed by local music critics.

During the third movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20, someone in the second or third row apparently suffered a seizure. It may not have been noticed by most of the audience in Verizon Hall, but it was surely noticed by the pianist, Rudolf Buchbinder, who was playing just a few feet away.

At the same time onstage, in the last row of the orchestra at the far left, the violinist Lisa-Beth Lambert jumped up and ran offstage, in plain view of everyone in the hall. Most people in the audience, to judge from my conversations at intermission, presumed she had taken ill. But an Orchestra spokesperson later told me that in fact Lambert had noticed what was transpiring below her and, as the most peripheral member of the ensemble, had run backstage to alert the staff to the problem.

In total silence

In perhaps a minute, and in total silence, an usher made her way along the row to investigate, then made her way back to the aisle and summoned another usher, who delicately made his way into the row. Soon he left and returned with a narrow wheeled vehicle suitable for squeezing between rows. At the ushers' direction— again, all in total silence— everyone seated in that row stood up and moved to the door; the victim was removed; the patrons returned to their seats; and Mozart's third movement continued without interruption.

What could have been a major distraction was handled so smoothly and seamlessly that many people in the audience never realized anything out of the ordinary had happened. This of course was to the credit of the musicians, and the staff of the Orchestra and the Kimmel Center. But it also said something about the grace and maturity of the people in the nearby seats, who seem to have grasped instinctively that the audience too is an important part of a performance and rose magnificently to the occasion.

Imagine New Yorkers

This sort of self-sacrificing concern for one's larger community strikes me as one of Philadelphia's unappreciated strengths, notwithstanding the late sociologist E. Digby Baltzell's derision of Philadelphians for their lack of assertiveness and their "anti-leadership vaccine." No one involved Saturday night, it's safe to say, had dealt before with such a situation; yet when the moment came, everyone instinctively knew what to do.

As I sat some 14 rows back, watching this whole episode unfold, I found myself wondering how such an incident would have played out in a more assertive place like New York or Chicago, two cities I have also called home.

Some New Yorker or Chicagoan, I suspect, would have said, "What's going on here?" Someone else would have responded, "Shh!" Someone else would have scolded the shusher: "Can't you see he's sick?" The whole performance might have been halted right there.

We pay a great deal of lip service to the uplifting role that good music contributes to a civilized society. Saturday night provided an opportunity to observe the theory in action.♦


To read a review of the concert by Peter Burwasser, click here.
To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.
To read responses, click here.