With its bright red upholstery, dark wood and about 380 seats, the Times Center pushes listeners close to the performers.
As a performer he employs intimacy as a strategy, drawing listeners close and then holding them at arm's length.
And even small touches, like Mr. Ax's sharp accenting in No. 4, seemed to pull the listener closer than usual to the heart of this vital music.
They all offered thoughts, like the idea of moving an instruction to the listener closer to the beginning of the episode, to heighten the mystery.
Behind the air of fragility is the serene confidence of a singer who knows the power of reticence to draw a listener closer.
On her albums — "Marry Me" (Beggars Banquet), from 2007, and "Actor" (Beggars/4AD), released last year — Ms. Clark often courts the private intensity of a bedroom recording, drawing a listener close (but not too close).
Listeners are closer to the stage than at Tully.
Because the space is relatively small, listeners were closer to the players than most could have been at the orchestral concert, and the musicians' informality — Ms. Jansen offered freewheeling introductions to each work, with Mr. Rysanov adding quips — seemed to shrink the distance further.
The presenters I meet are a preternaturally smiley bunch – they've drunk the LBC Kool-Aid – but their emotions, rather like those of their listeners, are close to the surface.
