Siberia meets Verona at Avery Fisher Hall.

As I noted in a post a few days ago, Ossetian conductor Valery Gergiev is currently on tour in the United States with the Kirov Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre. On Sunday and Monday, the tour came to New York's Avery Fisher Hall. Allan Kozinn of the New York Times has a review of Monday night's performance of Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet:

Here’s a mystery to ponder. When Valery Gergiev led the Kirov Orchestra of the Maryinsky Theater in the complete “Romeo and Juliet” ballet score on Monday evening, in the second of the orchestra’s four Prokofiev programs at Avery Fisher Hall, the balcony was largely empty at the start, and there were seats to be had in the orchestra section as well.

Can it be that Prokofiev is a tough sell these days? Is the financial crunch already taking its toll on ticket sales? Were New Yorkers sympathetic to Georgia, giving a cold shoulder to Mr. Gergiev for his public support of the Russian invasion?

The empirical evidence points to Prokofiev: at the intermission a significant part of the audience vanished, leaving the orchestra section looking emptier than it does for an amateur choir concert. (Another reason might have been the Siberian temperatures and draftiness in the hall.)

I make reference to Mr. Kozinn's review because I was one of the hardy ticketholders who stayed past intermission and listened to the entire performance. Like Mr. Kozinn, I was struck by how many empty seats there were at the start and thought that it might have had a lot to do with the state of the economy. I would be surprised if the controversy over Mr. Gergiev's August concert in South Ossetia kept many people away; even if pro-Georgia music fans boycotted the concert, their absence was more than compensated for by the substantial number of Russian-speaking patrons that I overheard before, during and after the concert. My general impression - based on this performance as well as the last time I heard the Kirov Orchestra - is that Russians living in New York turn out en masse when the Kirov comes to town.

I suspect that some seasoned patrons stayed away from Monday night's concert because they knew - as I would find out - that concert performances of complete ballet scores can sometimes be hard to sit through without the visuals that the music was meant to accompany. (During the concert, I often found myself squinting at the program in the dark to try to figure out where we were in the "story.") To my mind, one of the most adverse parts of the experience was what Kozinn describes as "the Siberian temperatures and draftiness in the hall," which I wondered a great deal about while sitting in a surprisingly chilly seat in the upper balcony. If frustration with the program might have tempted some patrons to leave early, the cold in the hall must have offered even more encouragement. Though I'm glad I stuck around for the end of what was really a very good concert, I hope the heating is back on next time I venture down to Lincoln Center. AMDG.