“The celebrated German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter had just reached the most sublime moment of the Larghetto in the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on Saturday night when she suddenly stopped playing and pointed to the front row,” writes Janelle Gelfand in Sunday’s (9/29) Cincinnati Business Courier. “The orchestra ground to a halt. A young woman was shooting a video of Mutter’s performance with an iPhone, just feet away and directly in front of the star. A confrontation of several minutes ensued, with Mutter exclaiming, ‘Either I will leave, or you will put away your phone and recording device,’ while the person stood up and spoke to her, seeming to be pleading her case. Finally, CSO president Jonathan Martin appeared and escorted the disruptor out, to the applause of the audience. With that, Mutter and guest conductor Eun Sun Kim launched the slow movement again, somehow even more beautifully than before.… The incident was an odd—and perhaps unprecedented—interruption to an otherwise superb concert.… The rising South Korean conductor Kim led the Cincinnati Symphony in a rewarding program that included Brahms’ Symphony No. 4,” plus the world premiere of Gabriella Smith’s composition entitled “f(x) = sin²x – 1/x.”
Posted September 30, 2019
