Christine Rooney asks:

>Is it appropriate to go back stage after an evening's performance to meet
>the guest artist?

I'm a bit shy.  I don't make a practice of going backstage.  However,
at times a performer has moved me very much, and I want to tell him or
her.  I figure they get a lot of negative criticism, so why not give them
something positive as well? I try, however, not to gush and to make my
praise as specific as I can.  For example, the pianist Susan Starr gave a
earth-pounding performance of Bernstein's Symphony No. 2 "Age of Anxiety."
I was just about alone in giving her a standing O.  One couple sitting
near me asked how I could like such ugly music enough to applaud beyond
politeness.  I said I found it powerful rather than ugly and that there
was a lot of boogie-woogie (which I like) in the piano part.  So I went
backstage and told Ms. Starr how much I thought she swung.  Two years
later, I went back again to congratulate her on a wonderfully delicate and
fleet performance of the MacDowell second piano concerto.  Antje Weithaas,
the young German violinist I've raved about before, I also talked with
backstage - briefly, since she doesn't speak English and my German isn't
what it was 20 years ago.  In fact, I like to keep these encounters as
brief as possible - just long enough to let people know I was paying
attention and liked what they did - so it doesn't tax either of us unduly.

Steve Schwartz