Are standing ovations becoming more common?

The way an audience chooses to demonstrate its appreciation differs from country to country. But our typical English reserve seems to be giving way to more American ebullience

Standing ovation
Clapped out ... A standing ovation at the Opera House in Copenhagen. Photograph: Jens N Rgaard Larsen/AFP/Getty Images

Marcel Berlins wonders in today's paper whether standing ovations are becoming more frequent in Britain. He explains why he wasn't one of those who stood up at the end of one of Daniel Barenboim's recent Beethoven recitals in the Royal Festival Hall, even though he found Barenboim's playing very fine.

As Berlins points out, we now copy the Americans' style of behaviour at party political conferences, which require that 'a celebrity' is greeted with a standing ovation simply for being who they are. If the celebrity's first entrance is greeted with a standing ovation, there is nowhere left for the audience's emotions to go during the rest of the evening. Do they have to give another ovation at the end? What if the performance doesn't deserve one? I was about to say that such an extreme opening gambit ties the audience's hands behind their backs, but actually the opposite is the case: it forces them to over-react.

There are definitely national styles in audience behaviour. Some years ago, my musician colleagues and I thought we knew just how audiences were likely to behave at the end of a really good concert. In Britain, of course, nothing would get the audience to its feet. Even if they clapped long and loud enough to get many encores, they remained firmly seated throughout. In Holland, people would applaud warmly for a minute while still seated, then a few people would rise to their feet, and slowly others would join them, until most of the audience was standing by the very end. On a particularly good evening, this would also happen before the interval. In Japan, the audience would stay seated and clap politely, but keep it up for so long and through so many curtain calls that the performers eventually understood they had been greatly appreciated. In America, people would jump to their feet right away, cheering as if they were at a baseball game. The first time this happened to me, it was so unexpected that I burst into tears, and although I now realise it's a national custom I still find it difficult to remain composed.

Recently, however, our British style seems to be changing. Is it another post-Diana lurch towards Mediterranean emotionality? I and my colleagues in the Florestan Trio couldn't believe our eyes at the end of a recent concert when some of the audience actually stood up in London's famous Wigmore Hall - at lunchtime! In some other UK cities we've seen the same thing. And I myself took part in a standing ovation a fortnight ago at the Young Vic, at the end of a remarkable performance of Mozart's Magic Flute by the Isango/Portobello company from South Africa. It felt nice to stand, but also unfamiliar. I think we all realised that we were experimenting with a new kind of Britishness.