On Thursday in Malmö, Sweden, an incident “involving a noisy gum wrapper during a performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony … escalated into a violent fist fight,” writes Angus McPherson in Thursday’s (10/18) Limelight (Australia). “Andris Nelsons was conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra … when the noise of an audience member rustling a chewing gum wrapper on the second balcony intruded on the fourth movement’s Adagietto… A young man incensed by the noise snatched the chewing gum from the hand of the woman sitting next to him and threw it on the floor. While the woman was silent for the remainder of the symphony … events took a turn for the worse once the music stopped…. The woman gave the younger man a slap right in his face. He … started fighting back. The slap, according to another witness, was hard enough to knock the young man’s glasses off…. The woman’s companion started grabbing the man by his shirt and throwing punches. ‘It was very unpleasant actually. I’ve never seen anything like it,’ said … audience member Olof Jönsson, who described the actions as ‘a violent attack.’ Other audience members eventually managed to calm the warring factions down.”
Posted October 23, 2018
