Masaaki Suzuki: belief

Transcript context

…How do Japanese audiences for classical music, say in Tokyo, differ from New York audiences? Hmmm, probably a little different. American audience are more friendly, I think. [laughter] More friendly and more easily excited by the performance, and they look more inspired directly from the music, and also musicians. In Japan, Japanese audiences — sometimes they know very well about the repertoire and they are very cooperative, but at the same time, they are a little bit, well, not so excited immediately. Probably on the inside, very excited, but we Japanese people don’t express directly from inside to outside. We were all told in school, for example, that is a rule. That is not the intellectual demeanor — something like that. What do you think of the hypothesis that Japanese audiences — they have a special interest in iconic works such as Beethoven’s Ninth, and there’s an insistence that they hear the best or experience the best, and single out very particular things. Do you think that’s true?…

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