From an online post relating the contents of Kanye West's talk to Oxford University:
“OK, everyone please be completely quiet, because I can literally hear a whisper, and it’ll throw off my stream of consciousness, and when I get my stream of consciousness going that’s when I give the best, illest quotes. Literally, a whisper can throw it off."
Um, right, so if Kanye West needs quiet in order to deliver this talk (you can read "more or less exactly" what he said at Oxford in that post), why should a pianist trying to perform the last three Beethoven sonatas need anything different? Hopefully this should put the kibosh well and truly on trendy ideas that we should allow talking, eating and texting in the concert hall.