Pollini and the sound of silence

Maurizio Pollini gave a solo piano recital at Symphony Hall on Sunday afternoon as part of the Celebrity Series. This concert was notable for one thing I didn't hear: the clatter of unoccupied seats during the performance.

Harvard University physicist Wallace Clement Sabine was responsible for the acoustic design of Symphony Hall. He felt that the ideal reverberation time for symphonic music was 2–2.5 seconds, and he guided the design of the ceiling, wall niches, seat cushions, ventilation system and overall shape of the auditorium to achieve this ideal. When Symphony Hall opened in 1900 it was praised for its acoustic perfection.

Unfortunately, audience noise carried just as well as the music coming from the stage. In any given performance you would hear the wooden THUNK of a folded seat accidentally falling to its open position.

Innovation has come 114 years later in the form of spring hinges. Empty seats now stay upright, and the hall's renowned acoustics are free from distracting detonations. If only engineers could do something about the HACK of ill-timed coughing, the SMACK of programs falling from laps, and the BOODLE-OODLE-OODLE-OO of unsilenced mobile phones.

On to the concert.

Maurizio Pollini has had a 50-year career as a classical pianist. He made his mark as an interpreter of 20th-century music, but for Sunday's recital he looked back to two early Romantic composers. In the first half of the program he played Robert Schumann's Arabeske in C major, Op 18, and the eight-movement Kreisleriana, Op 16. Symphony Hall's reverb proved a bit too much for a solo piano, blurring the details of quick passages. But it was satisfying to hear an elder statesman of the instrument give these works their due, with attention to dynamic shading and the long arcs of the melodic structures.

The second half of the recital comprised music of Frédéric Chopin. Pollini started with Sonata No 2 in B-flat minor, Op 35, featuring the instantly recognizable funeral march ("Pray for the dead, and the dead will pray for you"). He followed with Berceuse in D flat major, Op 57, a form of lullaby with a rocking, repetitive base line, then launched into Polonaise héroïque in A flat major, Op 53. It was heroic indeed. There were two encores: Nocturne in D flat major, Op 27, no 2, and Scherzo No 3 in C sharp minor, Op 39. After several bows there was a tease of a third encore, but Pollini exited the stage to the audience's clearly audible disappointment.