Fighting in the stalls

SIR – The original idea behind the encore (Letters, March 14) was that if a piece of music was received with enthusiasm it was played again.

Arthur Rubinstein once played Ravel’s Valses Nobles et Sentimentales to a Spanish audience that found it too modern and booed. Defiantly, at the end of the recital, he repeated the work while fighting broke out in the stalls.

More recently, I heard the Russian pianist Boris Berezovsky, after a performance of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, reprise for his encore its celebrated 18th variation, leaving the orchestra scrambling to come in on cue. Graham Chainey

Brighton, East Sussex