Dan Glaister Innovation
You are a concert pianist. You sit at your piano, carefully building up the tension in the hall as you deliver your definitive version of one of the core pieces of the classical repertoire. You approach the climax, playing pianissimo as you prepare for the shock of the fortissimo ending. Suddenly there is another sound, not specified on the manuscript: the crackle and the rustle of a cough sweet being unwrapped. The effect you had practised all your life to master has been ruined.
It is every perfomer’s nightmare, but the United kingdom’s Radio 3 has an answer. Available from the foyer of a classical- music venue, under the slogan “Music Sweet Music” – the rustle-free sweet wrapper.
“It has a practical as well as a promotional purpose,” said James Pestell, head of marketing for Radio 3. “It started as a way of putting in front of people the idea that Radio 3 does a huge amount of live broadcasts that can be wrecked by coughs and sneezes.”
Suzanne Clatworthy, administrator of St George’s Music Hall in Bristol, where the sweets will be given out before a performance of Prokofiev’s Sonata number 6 and Beethoven’s Appassionata, said: “There have been problems with noisy members of the audience rustling wrappers. During quiet pieces of music, this can ruin the whole production. The wrappers are waxed so that they don’t make a cellophane-type noise.”