I thought I agreed with the "why should we applaud" faction in this
debate, but wait.

There is a general belief that if you pay the money, you call the shots.
This is as American as apple pie and fatherhood.  But is it so all the
time?  While I do think it was a little preposterous of Perlman to inflict
yet another performance of the same unappreciated piece on his audience,
consider that they did not have to pay extra for it!

In addition, Perlman, cantankerous as he can be, and totally soaked in
traditional old-world musical values that amount to deep prejudices, has
really earned the right to educate his audience.  If he subjects audiences
in Florida to this, but not audiences elsewhere, that would stink of
something--I don't know what; profiling???  But I think the whole incident
simply underscores two things: that Perlman cares about Messiaen, and
Perlman cares about broadening the taste of his audience.  No matter how
wrong-headed this is, I think a suitable response might be to sneak out
after he has gotten going on the piece, as unobtrusively as possible.

True, it is within our rights to be indignant at this patronizing attitude,
and a few years ago I would have said, yeah, where's a rotten tomato
when you need one?  But now, when we're faced with a Perlman-less world
within a decade or two, a compulsory encore by him might not be such a
bad thing to have endured.

Arch

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