London Classical Music

London is a great city for classical music. 

London Symphony Orchestra - Barbican Hall
The LSO is regarding as one of the top five symphony orchestras in the world.  I saw the great Bernard Haitink (82 years old!) conduct a Mozart piano concerto and Bruckner's 4th symphony.  The Barbican Centre is about as 70s as a building complex can get, and the lobby areas feel like being in an outdated airport (Savannah, GA, perhaps).  That said, the LSO performance was fantastic.  I've gotten used to the particular sound of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which is all about the string section.  In contrast, the LSO is notable for the brass, and a precision that you typically only hear on carefully-engineered recordings.

Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields - Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields
If you listen to classical music on the radio, you've likely heard of the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.  They are a chamber orchestra who play without a conductor.  While they perform in many venues around the world, their home turf is the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square (no, I don't know which field it is or what St. Martin is doing there).  The playing was phenomenal, and the church itself is an unforgettable venue for their (mostly Baroque) sound.  The Adagio by Samuel Barber had the audience frozen.

Royal Albert Hall - BBC Proms
The Royal Albert Hall is an extravagant performance hall on the edge of Hyde Park.  Originally desginated "The Central Music Hall," when Queen Victoria was present to lay the cornerstone, she announced "I name this place the Royal Albert Hall."  It's across the street from the Albert Memorial, one of the most excessive memorials you will ever see.

The Royal Albert Hall has no air conditioning.  To retrofit the venue with A/C, it would cost as much to tear down and re-build the whole place.

I took a tour of the RAH, and they showed us the Royal Box, and we went into the Royal Retirement Room, which is where the queen takes her break before a performance and during the interval.

The BBC Proms are a summer concert series, in their 117th year.  74 concerts in less than three month, it's the greatest classical music festival in the world.  They're call "the proms" because the audience in the Stalls has no seats, they stand for the whole performance. 

Ok, that didn't explain why they're called Proms.  Prom is short for "promenade" which means to walk or to stand.  So the standing comes in...

Anyway, the tour guide will tell you that the acoustics in RAH are the best in the world, but in the two concerts that I've seen there, there is a distinct echo.  The seats are not very plush, and they sort of rotate around about 90 degrees so that you can pivot towards the stage,

I went to Opening Night at the Proms, and though I can't remember what they played, it was a lot of fun.  The concert was televised, with cameras flying all over the place, and there was a real spirit ot fun in the air that you don't normally encounter in a classical music performance.

Then I went to Prom 37 with a friend.  We first had dinner at the fancy restaurant at the RAH, a small place called Coda.  The food was terrific, and we dined with a view of the Albert Memorial.

The highlight of the performance (if you don't count the person standing in the Stalls who fainted) was the "Enigma Variations" by Elgar, which is as British a piece of music as there is.  Hearing that piece performed by the BBC Philharmonic, among an audience of (mostly Brits) was very moving.

More to come...