I was at the Sunday afternoon concert.  This audience was fortunately
without the prematurely applauding chucklehead that Bob Chen had to suffer,
but, yes, there were scattered coughs and wheezes punctuating the final
pianissimo.  I think that the pressure to achieve silence, clearly felt
by the audience, probably INDUCED more coughing -- psychosomatically --
than would be the case for an ordinary piece of music (Try not to think of
"rhinocerous").  And I'm not convinced that the 9th's ending isn't more a
stunt than a valid musical statement -- an idea that looks great on paper
but is doomed to fall short in performance.  You could argue that Mahler
the conductor would certainly be aware of audience noise problems, but
wrote it that way anyhow.  Still, if he'd lived to perform the work a
few times I wonder whether he might not have altered the ending.

I stuck around for the RPO concert in the evening.  The audience was much
quieter.  Go figure.

-- Art Scott
Livermore, CA