When you're just getting to know classical music, going to a concert seems like the natural next step, and yet for many people it's the step they keep putting off. Part of the reason is everything that surrounds the music: grand halls with chandeliers, an evening that seems to follow its own ceremony from start to finish, and the feeling that there's a set of rules everyone else in the room learned long ago. Add a few myths, such as the idea that these concerts are only for experts or for an older, wealthier crowd, and the whole thing starts to look like a world you need an invitation to enter.
In practice, it's far more open than it looks. Most of the formality is simply tradition. And the few rules that do exist all come down to one thing: letting everyone in the hall hear the music.
As your guide to classical music, we at Virtuoso want to help you get past that first hesitation. In this article, we'll cover everything you need to know before a concert. There's less of it than you might think, and by the end you'll be ready to sit back and enjoy the evening, even if it's your very first time.
Every kind of concert has its own unwritten norms, and they grow out of the music itself.
Rock and pop are made for stadiums and big arenas, where the sound comes through powerful speakers and the audience sings along, dances, and holds up their phones. Classical music goes to much smaller halls, and sometimes to churches. There's no amplification, so the music reaches you only through the room itself, and a quiet passage can easily get lost in the rustle of a program or a whispered comment. That's where the silence and the set moments for applause come from. They can feel formal because they're unfamiliar, not because anyone is testing the newcomers.
There's also a sense of occasion that goes back a long way. Before radio and recordings, the only way to hear music was to hear it live, so a concert was an event in its own right, something people planned for and looked forward to. Some of that feeling has stayed, and it's a large part of why the evening can seem like a ceremony.
You probably should try it at least once, and the reason has to do with how this music came about.
Classical music was written to be performed live, in particular spaces: a church, a palace hall, and later a purpose-built concert hall. The size of the orchestra and even the character of the music depended on the room in which it was played. A recording gives you the music, but not the space it was written for.
Listening live is also different from listening at home. You can't pause, there's a lot to look at, and you need to stay focused for longer than you would with headphones on.
You can explore how halls, instruments, and the music itself evolved together in our free course, A Brief History of Classical Music, in the Virtuoso app.
No. Plenty of people go to concerts on their own, and a classical concert is one of the easiest events to attend alone. Everyone is seated; no one talks while the music is playing, and for most of the evening, the whole room faces the same way and pays attention to the same thing.
Whether you came with someone or not, you're sharing it with a few hundred other people.
The simplest place to start is the music itself. Look for composers you've heard of and pieces you already know, whether they're famous in general or simply familiar to you from a film, an advert or a playlist you like. Ideally, choose a program with several shorter pieces rather than one long work: if one of them doesn't speak to you, the next is never far away, and you'll leave with a clearer sense of what you enjoy.
The performers matter too. The same piece can sound noticeably different depending on who plays it, and comparing interpretations is one of the real pleasures of classical music. But that's something that becomes interesting a little later. For your first few concerts, the choice of music matters far more than the names of the orchestra or the soloist.
Most of all, choose from what's available to you. The hall, the performers and the whole atmosphere of the evening all play a part, and over time you'll develop your own preferences. But to find out how a live concert feels to you, whatever is on near you is perfectly good enough.
The titles on a concert poster can look puzzling in their own right: Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 is more of an address than a name. If you'd like to know how to read them, we've written a guide on how to read classical music titles.
Closer isn't always better. The front rows are often among the cheaper seats because, from there, you mostly hear the instruments nearest to you rather than the orchestra as a whole. The sound of an orchestra needs some distance to blend.
That's why the best sound is often further back, in the middle of the stalls or at the front of the first balcony. Balcony seats tend to cost less than the stalls, and in many halls they sound just as good.
The idea that you need to dress up for a classical concert goes back to a time when people dressed up for almost any evening out, whether to the theatre, a restaurant or a dinner with friends. At classical concerts, the habit simply lasted longer than elsewhere. Today it's loosening, and many concert halls and orchestras say plainly that you can come in whatever you feel comfortable in.
In practice, there's no dress code at most concerts, and smart casual is a safe choice.
Smart casual means neat but not formal: a shirt or jumper, a dress or trousers without a full suit, smart shoes or clean trainers: no tie or evening gown, and nothing you'd wear to the gym or the beach.
Can you wear jeans? Yes. At most concerts, a neat pair of jeans is perfectly appropriate.
So why do so many concert videos on YouTube show audiences in dinner jackets and evening gowns? Because the concerts that get filmed and broadcast are often special occasions, formal dress is really expected. These include gala concerts and season openings, opera premieres, televised celebrations such as the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert at the Musikverein, and festivals with traditions of their own. If an event does have a specific dress code, such as black tie, it will almost always be stated on the ticket or invitation, so you're unlikely to miss it.
And the musicians on stage, almost always in tailcoats or all in black? That's the orchestra's working uniform, not a guide for the audience.
Most regular concertgoers would say yes: it's worth listening at least once before you go. Any piece is easier to follow when you already know roughly how it goes, and even more so if the program includes a longer work: you recognize the main tune when it comes back, you can tell when a quiet passage is about to give way to something bigger, and you're less likely to lose your place halfway through.
It also helps to know a little about the music beyond the notes: who wrote it, when, and for what kind of audience. That kind of background is exactly what the Virtuoso app is for: short lessons on composers, eras, and individual pieces, with the music playing as you go.
A typical concert lasts between an hour and a half and two hours, with an interval in the middle.
The part that worries people most is applause. Many pieces in a concert are made up of several movements, separate sections with short pauses between them, and the custom is to clap only at the end of the whole work, not in those pauses. The program lists the movements so that you can keep count.
If you lose track, the simplest rule is not to be the first to clap. Wait until the conductor lowers their arms and turns towards the audience, or until the rest of the hall starts. And if someone does clap after a first movement, which happens quite often after a lively one, it's a small slip rather than a scandal, and the music carries on as usual.
After a concerto, the soloist will often return to the stage and play a short extra piece alone. This is called an encore, and you won't find it in the program.
If it's your first time, it's perfectly normal for your attention to drift at some point. A single movement of a symphony can last fifteen or twenty minutes, with no words to follow and no story being acted out on stage, and that takes some getting used to.
What helps is giving your eyes and ears something to do. Watch which instruments are playing the main tune and notice when it passes from one section of the orchestra to another, from the violins to the woodwinds, say, or to the brass. And use the program to keep track of which movement you're in, so you know roughly how far along you are.
A classical concert asks for an evening of your time and a bit of attention, and in return you hear the music in the kind of space it was written for. The more you know about what's on the program, the easier it is to stay with it, and that's where Virtuoso can help: it takes you through the best-known composers and pieces a few minutes at a time, with the music playing as you learn.