My rule for a standing ovation is this: if the performance deserves one it should lift you up, almost a levitation, and you should find yourself standing as if by magic. 

I don’t always follow this rule. You stick your neck out when you leap to your feet before others. And you seem the curmudgeon when you stay seated while everyone else is standing. 

Every so often, though, conditions are right. The music moves you, you’ve cleared your lap of program and purse, and when the last notes sound you’re ready to jump up and start clapping. 

That’s what happened last night when the National Symphony Orchestra played the final bars of Shostakovich’s Symphony Number 5.  It’s a prodigious work, one I’ve loved since I first heard the Leonard Bernstein recording of it at my friend Barbie’s house in high school. 

I listened last night with significantly altered ears, heard the suffering and the pathos of it, the triumph, too. I felt the shiver down the spine, the frisson that cannot be faked. I knew that when it ended I would be on my feet.  It was the least I could do.

(The Kennedy Center Concert Hall stage, January 25, 2024)