classical music
Nov 17th, 2002 | 03:38 PM
#4
Guest
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Major halls are these: I have added the nearest tube station<BR>Royal Festival Hall, Waterloo<BR>Queen Elizabeth Hall, Waterloo<BR>St Johns Smith Square (which is no longer a church), Westminster<BR>The Barbican, Barbican<BR><BR>Important recital rooms are the Purcell Room, Waterloo, and Wigmore Hall, Bond street tube<BR><BR>Churches strong in lunchtime and evening music include St Ann and St Agnes, St Paul's tube, St Margaret's Lothbury, Bank tube, and St James Piccadilly, Piccadilly Circus tube. There are plenty more, good in quality but less frequent, in the City (meaning the area inside the medieval walls), and to the e-mail copy of this I am attaching a note on such concerts from 1 to 19 December: I have omitted recitals by solos or duets. December is a particularly musical time, and I fear city churches have less music in other months, and almost none in August.<BR><BR>There are occasional concerts in Southwark and St Paul?s cathedrals, and with Westminster Abbey they are strong in organ recitals.<BR><BR>Each concert hall, recital room and church that I have named has a website with concert listings.<BR><BR>St Martin in the Fields does great work for charity, and gathers much money from collections or entrance tickets for music. The lunchtime recitals are often good, but the evening concerts are given by scratch orchestras by candlelight, and run through a limited roster of easy classics played fairly poorly. Because organisers hand leaflets to passers-by, many of them tourists, the evening events are well known to American and other visitors. The very fact of dressing them up in candlelight suggests that they are a tourist draw.<BR><BR>When you reach London any newsagent will sell you a listings magazine, Time out or What's On, with good coverage of all music. Neither magazine covers all the events in City churches: both cover rock and roll, but Time Out does so more thoughtfully.<BR><BR>Please write if I can help further. Welcome to London<BR><BR>Ben Haines<BR><BR>
Nov 18th, 2002 | 04:53 PM
#5
Guest
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Ben, I think you are a little too tough on the evening offerings at St. Martins.<BR><BR>We heard a lovely Faure Requiem there a few weeks ago and have heard some nice baroque and early romantic stuff in other years. <BR><BR>While the repertory offered may be limited, it is certainly appropriate for the venue. The combination of music and candlelight has a nicely synergistic effect.
