“It feels a little like a rehearsal . . . but with none of that relaxation that you have in a rehearsal,” pianist Stephen Hough said after giving the first live performance at London’s Wigmore Hall since lockdown began.
In compliance with social distancing rules, just two music-lovers were in the audience that day: the concert hall’s director and a BBC presenter.
In many places, the near future will continue to look a lot like this. The English Premier League restarted this week in stadiums empty of the regular fans. When Bayern Munich won the German Bundesliga for the eighth consecutive time, they staged an awkward celebration before half a dozen club officials up in the stands. In Manchester, the West Indies cricket team — crowd-pleasers to a man — are in training for a closed-door Test series against England, inside a sanitised and Covid-tested protective ring.