Retrospect Ensemble?

The Kings Consort is, apparently, no longer happy with its name. This is reasonable enough, considering the recent revelations about the activities of Robert King. In fact, its hard to think of a worse name - Jonathan Kings Consort perhaps? What they've come up with isn't quite that bad, but it hardly rolls of the tongue. Still, the success of Ensemble 415, a group named after a pitch convention (sexy!), demonstrates that in period performance at least its the sounds you make and not the sounds your name makes that matter.

Henry Purcell - Coming Clean about the Name

The English can't lay claim to many of the world's greatest composers. A pity, then, that we can't even agree on the pronunciation of the immortal names the country has produced. Henry PurCELL was relatively uncontroversial until revisionist scholars (i.e. busybodies) adopted a stress on the first syllable - Henry PURcell. A least one blogger has pointed out that the last syllable stress is preferred by the composer's living namesakes. Could it just be that they, like the classical music community at large, chose to distance themselves from a certain leading brand of washing powder?

Those Americans!

I've just found this in a 1985 journal of the International Trombone Association. It's a joke of some sort, it must be, right? It appears to have been awarded at the end of each AGM according to a strict set of criteria, although history fails to record their details. Buddy Baker seems pleased with it though.

Mendelssohn Remembered?

and speaking of Mendelssohn, it's shaping up to be a quiet anniversary year for him. In the UK, all manner of Purcell, Handel and Haydn activities are planned, but Mendelssohn seems to have dropped off the bottom of the list. Perhaps he didn't visit quite as often as he should, but it was enough to keep him on Queen Victoria's Christmas list. Norman Lebrecht ran a column in December lamenting his neglect, and now I see that Jessica Duchen and Tom Service have picked up a juicy story about suppressed love letters in the basement of the Royal Academy of Music. Could this be the first ever composer anniversary to be celebrated exclusively by blog?

Trilobites don't have Serial Numbers

2009 is Darwin year (as well as Purcell year, Handel year, Haydn year, Mendelssohn year...), and for those music/science type institutions looking for musical Darwin links, Niles Eldredge has some interesting angles. He's a palaeontologist who has turned his biological theories to the development of the cornet. Apparently it is easier to keep track of the dates of cornets than trilobites because 'Trilobites don't come with serial numbers.' Sounds like the musicologists have got it easy for once.

NYO at Camden Roundhouse

Large concert halls do orchestral music no justice at all, so it was an inspired decision of the National Youth Orchestra to present their January programme to London audiences at the Camden Roundhouse. Visually the setup is stunning; the audience in the round with the orchestra surrounded by a circular colonnade of iron pillars. The conical roof is not ideal – much of the sound is lost in the rafters – but this is compensated by the proximity.
Having attracted an audience that sold out the Albert Hall at last year’s Proms, it was no surprise that this smaller venue was also filled to capacity. And the confidence of a virtually audience has encouraged adventurous programming, with the first half consisting of Bow-Wave, a new work by Peter Wiegold, followed by Berio’s Sinfonia. The two works formed a satisfying contrast, with the unselfconscious musical theatricality of Wiegold’s work a refreshing aural appetiser for the more culturally sophisticated language of Berio’s masterpiece.
Bow-Wave was performed by the NYO players (under the composer’s baton) entirely from memory. This considerable feat allowed the composer to integrate some actions, Mexican waves passing along the row of horns, spinning cellos and an epilogue in which the entire ensemble faces the back of the stage. Occasional and light hearted, but carried off with panache.
Sinfonia continues to stand the test of time, as was amply demonstrated by this engaged reading from an ensemble whose oldest members were born over twenty years after its premiere. Its central message, that art and music must redefine their roles within the cultural saturation of modern society, was apt for the Camden setting. The work opens with vocal soloists (London Voices) chattering in an array of European languages, which was immediately reminiscent of the short walk up Camden High Street from the tube to the venue. Postmodernism in music often implies (and requires from performers) a familiarity bordering on indifference to the standard repertoire that appears in quotes and references. But Berio’s approach is less jaded, and the orchestra’s enthusiastic interjections of snippets from Mahler, Debussy and Ravel in the third movement were as convincing as any on record. However, this meant that the vocal soloists had a harder time being heard; even with amplification they were often swamped, and much of the crucial text was lost.
The second half was given over to Strauss’ Alpensymphonie, for which the NYO swelled to its fullest size, with some 160 players occupying every corner of the vast stage. Such a large ensemble leads to inevitable ensemble issues, even with players of this calibre. Semyon Bychkov addressed the problem with an emphatic reading of the work, strict, often brisk tempi and emphasised details that may otherwise have been swallowed up in the sound. Strauss’ climaxes - the summit and later the storm - benefited from the large orchestra without the quieter passages suffering unduly.
Of all the fine qualities the young players of the NYO displayed, the most remarkable was stamina. The long programme concluded with ten minutes or so of quiet but intensely concentrated music in the sunset, close and night movements of the symphony. The performance here was immaculate, the piano woodwinds finely balanced, the trombone chorales precisely co-ordinated. The highlight of the evening and an example that many of their professional counterparts would struggle to match.

Day One at Kings Place

Attending the opening day of a major new venue is a fascinating experience. Everything works, more or less, but every activity is taking place for the first time, and nothing runs smoothly. Visitors are not sure where they are going and are greeted by an army of guiders on entering the building. No one has quite worked out how to use the touch screen systems on the cash registers or the volume controls for the public announcements. And the pretence that the construction work has been completed on schedule is soon dispelled by the sound of hammering and sawing from the floor above.
Teething troubles only, no doubt, but there is a sense at Kings Place that everyone is out to impress. This is the first day of a week-long opening extravaganza for the venue, with its two halls hosting 100 concerts running morning, noon and night. Those who have made it in early for the first, a 9.30 am concert by the London-based Endymion Ensemble, are in a receptive mood and are ready to forgive the minor inconveniences.
The opening of Kings Place is a significant event in London’s musical life. It is the first purpose built classical music venue to open in the city since the Barbican Centre in 1982. Its business model is markedly different to those of other venues. The project is privately financed, and the venue will be expected to pay its own way, without the government subsidies that keep most of the UK’s classical music afloat. The visual and performing arts part of the Kings Place project is intended as the welcoming public face of a building that will otherwise accommodate smart offices. Which is not to say that the music venues will rely on the office rents for subsidy. Peter Millican, the CEO and driving force behind the project is confident that conference and business events hosted in the halls themselves will provide the funding they require.
One variable in this equation is the future prosperity of the area. Kings Place is located just behind Kings Cross station to the north of the city centre. The location is central enough to prosper, and the public transport links offered by the twin stations of Kings Cross and St Pancras are among the best in London, with suburban, national, and even international trains (from the channel tunnel) terminating here. Besides Kings Place, the major development prospect for the area is a project called Kings Cross Central, a housing, shopping and entertainment complex planned for a site on the opposite side of the road. But work has yet to begin there, and for now Kings Place stands in splendid isolation with its elegant modern facade of rippling blue glass set against a background of dilapidated housing blocks, various rail sheds and a petrol station.
The first impression on entering the building (after having been copiously greeted and directed) is of a distinctly corporate environment. Not surprising considering this is the foyer of an office block. The ground floor is given over to cafes, a restaurant, a small gallery facing onto the street and a very small box office. (Online ticket buying is encouraged, with airline style dynamic pricing to encourage early booking with lower prices.) Escalators at the far end descend into the basement arts space. No Nibelheim this, but rather a well lit atrium consisting of an art gallery spread across two floors and doubling as a foyer space for the two concert halls. The upper floor of the gallery is a balcony stretching around the four walls, wide enough to be considered a mezzanine but leaving enough headroom for the lower floor to be considered grand. Each day of the opening week begins with a performance of Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes, with its clockwork performers lined up around the edge of the balcony. In this context, the work is more installation art than music, as the metronomes are virtually inaudible over the ambient foyer noise.
The metronomes could be considered a statement of artistic intent, but only in that they demonstrate the diversity of the music on offer. Another unusual feature of the Kings Place project is that no single artistic director has been appointed. Short concert series will be staged with relative artistic independence, each running to just a handful of performances. The hope is that, rather than being seen to lack artistic focus, the venue will gain a reputation for diversity and appeal to multiple audience groups. Western classical music will be the core element of the programming, but jazz, world music, dance events and the spoken word will all appear on the schedules. The initial programming matches this diversity with an impressive quantity of events, suggesting that the aim of this first season is to find a foothold for the venture in as many cultural sectors as possible.
The combination of diversity and quantity is also reflected in the use of the available space. The main hall has only 400 seats, but there is also a second hall of 200 seats and a variety of other rehearsal, education and, of course, conference spaces. Hall two is effectively a studio space and has been designed with diversity of use in mind; the seating is movable and the acoustics tailored for various forms of amplified sound.
But the excitement in London leading up to the opening of the venue has been generated by hall one and the acoustic it offers. There has long been a feeling in London that the city’s classical music is poorly served by the concert halls in which it is performed. There is a hope that Kings Place may go some way to putting this to rights.
Stepping into the hall, the first aural impression is of leaving the ambience of the resonant atrium behind. In fact, the hall sits on rubber feet to shield it from the inevitable vibrations from the major transport hub next door. The hall is a classic shoebox, making the acoustic easier to model and control. The walls are panelled with oak with a variety of angled surfaces in rectangular recesses to texture the sound. The seating is slightly raked, providing excellent sight lines, and a balcony around all four walls also offers a range of fine vantage points. The upper third or so of the hall in linded with large rectangular arcades, and the resonance can be controlled with movable curtains behind. The sound is both warm and clear, proximity to the performers being an obvious advantage of the small scale. Inevitably, the sound varies according to position, but for my money the front of the stalls and the side balconies offer the greatest transparency. The concerts scheduled for the opening day, ten in all, included chamber instrumental works in the morning, lieder recitals in the afternoon and 18th century opera excerpts in the evening. In the instrumental works, the detail of the sound is the most impressive feature. Even the keys of the new Steinway rising to their resting positions are audible. In the vocal music, the florid resonance was the key feature, not overbearing but rich and satisfying.
Kings Place is primarily a chamber music venue, so the natural comparison is with the Wigmore Hall, the undisputed home of chamber music in London. Thankfully, the Kings Place acoustic offers a very different sound. It’s certainly clearer and warmer, but the Wigmore’s dryer, more traditional sound is likely to remain the preference of many. Whichever way, the Wigmore Hall’s status as the centre of all things chamber music in London seems secure.
But unless the new venue draws audiences away from existing halls, it is difficult to see how it can remain viable. Discussion of Kings Place in the UK media has been split fairly evenly between praise for the acoustic in its main hall and concern over its business model. The audience base for classical music in London is estimated to be around 30,000, and many are of the opinion that existing venues can more than meet this demand. To succeed, Kings Place will have to either poach business from other venues or expand this core audience through innovative programming and marketing. The evidence so far is that they are planning to do both.
The odds may be stacked against the long-term viability of Kings Place as a music venue, but Millican and his colleagues have brought sound business sense to the project, with a number of impressive supporting strands weighing in its favour. The Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment and the London Sinfonietta, the UKs leading period instrument ensemble and contemporary music group respectively have moved their offices to Kings Place, and each has been given a prime office space at a peppercorn rent. Both ensembles are now officially resident in the hall. This will bring excellent publicity, especially given how well the acoustic will match their respective sounds. Another cultural coup has been to sign up the Guardian and Observer newspapers as the first commercial tenants, papers with a reputation for thorough and enthusiastic performing arts coverage.
Kings Place is a venue with a distinctly corporate atmosphere, an arts project based on a venture capital business model. Peter Millican himself admits to having virtually no experience of arts management, but his track record with major business ventures is enviable. He is not expecting the Kings Place concert halls to make a profit, but he is expecting them to break even. Today’s financial climate makes any talk of long-term stability seem optimistic, and Millican is clearly an optimist. But he has shrewd business sense and creative ideas about how the project can work. The fine acoustic of his concert hall combined with the diversity and quality of the music he has planned for it make the venue a major asset for London. With any luck the books will balance and Kings Place will become a mainstay for classical music in capital for years to come.