Royal Festival Hall News
multi-purpose venue in London, England, UK
- London Borough of Lambeth
- United Kingdom
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2024-03-19
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2024-03-18 14:54:15
‘Fiat Lux’ brought vivid imagery to the Barbican while ‘Aloud’ made a gritty statement at the Royal Festival Hall
2024-03-18 07:35:00
Quite an achievement: the North London Chorus' ambition rewarded in a performance of Ethel Smyth's The Prison that intrigued and engaged
[…] Prison, and I wished they had had the confidence to end with Smyth.It is nearly 20 years, I think, since the previous UK performance of Smyth's The Prison. The North London Chorus showed braveness in tackling the work, and the results were a great achievement.Never miss out on future posts by following usThe blog is free, but I'd be delighted if you were to show your appreciation by buying me a coffee.Elsewhere on this blogFrom Early Music to contemporary: the Royal Festival Hall organ is 70 and organist James McVinnie is celebrating - interviewAlmost an expressionist nightmare: Janáček's Jenůfa at ENO with Jennifer Davis in the title role - opera reviewLittle short of a revelation: Michael Spyres, Les Talens Lyriques & Christophe Rousset explore Wagner's influences with In the Shadows - record reviewUpheaval: cellist Janne Fredens & pianist Søren Rastogi in music by four women composers from the years 1911 to 1918 - record reviewSomething astonishing: Olivia Fuchs' new production of Britten's Death in Venice for Welsh […]
2024-03-16 09:57:00
From Early Music to contemporary: the Royal Festival Hall organ is 70 and organist James McVinnie is celebrating with a Southbank Centre residency
James McVinnie performing at the Royal Festival Hall organ with Bedroom Community - Sept 2015The Royal Festival Hall organ is 70. Built from 1950–1954 to the specification of the London County Council's consultant, Ralph Downes, it was restored and re-configured by Harrison & Harrison as part of the hall's reconstruction during 2005-2007 and it was re-inaugurated on its 60th anniversary in March 2014. Now, to celebrate the instrument's 70th birthday, organist James McVinnie has a residency at the Southbank Centre featuring organ recitals including a wide range of repertoire as well as an appearance by the James McVinnie Ensemble.Though James had played the organ once before the rebuild, he was not familiar with it until he came to play it as part of the 2014 celebrations. But he spent two years as an organ scholar at St Albans Cathedral where the organ was also designed by Ralph Downes and built by […]
2024-03-15 12:11:22
Battersea Arts Centre, LondonDanielle de Niese took on twinned roles of dancer and singer Anna with great style, the evening introduced by João Barradas’s fiery accordionThe cathedral-like space of Battersea Arts Centre’s Grand Hall, with its high ceilings and distressed walls, is an atmospheric place for the London Philharmonic to decamp to for this performance of The Seven Deadly Sins, the 1933 “sung ballet” that was Kurt Weill and Bertholt Brecht’s last collaboration. That said, prosaically enough it would probably have worked better back home in the Royal Festival Hall. All those unbroken hard surfaces at the BAC make for a cathedral-like acoustic: pitted against a full orchestra, playing with bite and swing for the conductor Edward Gardner, all five singers had to be miked, and the sound system was blunt. Singing the English version by WH Auden and Chester Kallmann, they worked hard but far too much text and nuance […]
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