During the "Qui Tollis" of John Eliot Gardiner's transporting performance of the Mozart C minor Mass on Sunday afternoon, Avery Fisher Hall began to throb with the sounds of an alien invasion. A digital fluttering was heard in the land, and Lo! it grew to a mighty racket (miserere nobis!) even as the orchestra reached a fortissimo. Since the sound didn't comr from a stationary source, but seemed to swoop around the rafters, some listeners thought that a flock of birds had somehow made it past the security guards and the draconian ushers, but that seems the height of unlikeliness. It might have been a nuclear-powered hearing aid, in which case the appropriate government agency should immediately revoke its patent. By the "Quoniam" it was gone. My money's still on Mozart-loving Martians.
–Justin Davidson
Jdavidson8 at nyc.rr.com
