A Singer’s Life Pt28
I have written about opera houses and about cities and towns, but as I wrote early on, opera is not everything. I have sung concerts and recitals in concert halls, churches, cathedrals and great houses.
Today, I’d like to tell you about the great concert halls.
I’m going to start in Edinburgh, my home town. We are lucky in some ways, in that we have two fine halls. The Queen’s Hall which is perfect for small scale works like recitals or chamber music was converted from Hope Park Chapel (built in 1823) into a modern concert venue in 1979. I sang many times in the hall just after its opening and always found it a delight to sing in. Seating 900, it is uncomfortable to sit in and has poor sight-lines, but has become a much loved venue, particularly during the Edinburgh International Festival when it hosts morning recitals at 11am each day, featuring some of the world’s greatest singers, instrumentalists and chamber groups.
The main concert hall in Edinburgh is the Usher Hall, funded by whisky magnate Andrew Usher, and opened in 1914. It was constructed and decorated in a classic Beaux-Arts style with curved walls and a dome, and was fully renovated in 2 stages, reopening in 2009. It seats 2,200 and has a very fine acoustic, improved even more by the recent renovations. Unfortunately, I have little experience of singing there, and nothing recently, having only ever sung 2 concerts, both in the 1970s. You may wonder, given the evidence of the last 27 parts of these memoirs, why this is the case. So do I! Prophets..own countries… etc.. Who knows? I have been to umpteen wonderful concerts there though, featuring such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Bernard Haitink, Pavarotti, Gundula Janowitz, Alexander Gibson, Alfred Brendel and Simon Rattle.
The north of England is rich in magnificent Town Halls and I have been lucky enough to sing in many of them. Leeds and Sheffield stand out as the finest. Leeds Town Hall was opened in 1858 by Queen Victoria and for over a hundred years was the tallest building in the city at a height of nearly 70 metres. It was built to show that Leeds was a power not only in the north of England but throughout the world, and it is indeed extremely imposing. Actually, it’s also rather a good place to sing, with a capacity of 1500, and boasts the largest 3 manual organ in Europe. It was there that I met Sir Peter Maxwell-Davies. I was singing a Haydn Mass in the first half of the concert and a piece by Max in the second half. I hadn’t looked very closely at my contract and turned up for the rehearsal on the afternoon of the concert as usual. I had sung with the Leeds Philharmonic Chorus before and knew their conductor, and all seemed to go fine at first. At the interval of the rehearsal, I noticed a small dapper figure in the Green Room, who came over to me, shook my hand and introduced himself as Peter Maxwell-Davies and that he was looking forward very much to conducting me in his work. Now, his music is not for the faint-hearted and I had worked very hard to prepare myself well for this concert but the thought of singing it for the composer was a different matter altogether. Fortunately my hard work paid off as he declared himself very happy with my performance, but it did make me read my contracts very closely in the future.
Sheffield Town Hall is a neo-classical building opened in 1932 and seating 2271, and was also designed to project the industrial power and wealth of this city, world renowned for its steel production. I sang several concerts there, and enjoyed the excellent acoustics of a famous building, as well as the fine pubs and restaurants of this splendid city.
Manchester was well-known for its splendid Free Trade Hall, where I sang on a couple of occasions. Reading about it, I see that people complained about its poor acoustics, but my memory does not reveal my thoughts on that! It was built in the 1850s and opened as a venue for concerts by the famous Hallé Orchestra in 1858. It had a long and illustrious career as the premier concert hall in the north of England, but it was badly damaged in World War 2 and there was a determination to replace it. In 1996, the new Bridgewater Hall was opened, where I have also sung. It is a pretty good modern hall and the orchestra have reached great heights recently under the auspices of Sir Mark Elder. The Free Trade Hall is now a hotel!
Moving on to Birmingham, I was lucky enough to sing in the wonderful Symphony Hall there several times, notably with Sir Simon Rattle in Schoenberg’s mighty Gurrelieder, not long after it opened in 1991. It seats 2262 and is considered to have one of the finest acoustics in the world. Simon was closely involved in its construction and its acoustics, and indeed one of the spectacular features are that the acoustic can be changed from concert to concert, by opening panels, putting dampers in, changing materials and other clever tricks. For Gurrelieder, which is a huge work for large orchestra, enormous choir, five soloists and a narrator, they made the acoustic as big and cavernous as possible, which was fantastic to hear and be in. The next year, I sang a Haydn Mass there with small forces and they created a much more mellow and warm acoustic. That concert was memorable for me, as it introduced me to a young mezzo who had recently joined our management agency. She seemed rather good. It was Dame Sarah Connolly, as she now is, one of the finest singers in the world! I went back to Symphony Hall to sing Fafner in a concert performance of Wagner’s ‘Ring’ and this time the full acoustic was back, giving Wagner’s music a wonderful sheen and splendour. It’s quite a place.
I have sung a couple of times in St David’s Hall in Cardiff, which is easily recognisable from the televised Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. It is a strange place, as it appears to be in the middle of a shopping centre and has no obvious facade. It is as far removed from the magnificence of the Usher Hall or Leeds Town Hall as possible. In fact, you have to climb up inside to get to the hall. It has a very good acoustic, mind you, and has become an iconic venue, if not a particularly attractive one.
London, as the UK’s capital city, is superbly endowed with fine concert halls. By far the most magnificent is the Royal Albert Hall, situated in Kensington on the edge of Hyde Park. Dedicated to Queen Victoria’s husband, who had conceived the idea of a great hall beside Hyde Park, and opened in 1871, it has a present capacity of 5272, making it by far the largest classical concert hall in Britain. Since 1941, the BBC Proms have taken place in the Albert Hall and I have been lucky enough to appear in several Proms concerts, notably Purcell’s ‘King Arthur’ with the English Concert and Wagner’s ‘Tannhäuser’ with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by my old school friend, Donald Runnicles. It is a quite marvellous venue. Its sheer size hits you when you walk out on stage, with galleries at all eye levels and the huge Proms standing area in front of you, with thousands of extremely excited fans looking forward to the concert. The surprise is that the acoustic is very good. You have to project properly, but the temptation to push the voice is easily resisted, as the sound carries very well to all parts.
The Barbican Centre was built over a long and controversial period, and finally opened in 1982. I was studying at the Guildhall School, which is part of the whole complex, from 1978- 1981, and during my time there, we were constantly fighting with the noise and dust of the main centre. From the outside, it is remarkably ugly, built in the “brutalist style”, which lives up to its name, but inside, it is really rather nice and the concert hall is warm and inviting, with a lot of wood involved. Unfortunately, its design was flawed, as there is not enough room for a big choir and there is no organ, but it is very good to sing in. I was involved in many concerts there, including Sir Colin Davis conducting Berlioz’s ‘The Trojans’ (Ghost of Hector again) with the LSO and Britten’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (again with Colin and the LSO), when we gave two semi-staged concerts prior to making the Philips recording in the same place. Looking at my archive material recently, I was reminded that, for the concerts, costumes were made for us by the Queen’s fashion designer, Hardy Amies, of Savile Row. Heaven knows how much they cost, and why for a concert, but it was quite exciting at the time to meet the Queen’s designer! As Duke Theseus, I must have had rather a splendid costume, but I can find no record of photos or correspondence.
On London’s South Bank, we find two more concert halls where I performed regularly – the Festival Hall and the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The Festival Hall was built for the Festival of Britain, a great celebration of Britain’s revival after the trauma of the Second World War, showcasing the nation’s advances in science, arts and technology. The QEH and its smaller cousin, the Purcell Room, were added in the 1960s to form an ugly but important powerhouse of musical performance. I never particularly liked singing in the Festival Hall, as I felt its acoustic was dry and unforgiving, but loved the smaller QEH and, for several years, sang there frequently with some success. Huge changes have been made since then, and I believe that the complex is an altogether different beast from the one I remember. Another huge attraction of singing at the South Bank Centre was its proximity to one of our favourite restaurants RSJ, a haven of delicious French food with a magnificent wine list, strongly favouring wines from the Loire (see Part 21). Sadly RSJ has gone but its memory lingers on.
I must briefly mention the concert hall in the converted church, St John’s, Smith Square, a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament. Dating from 1728 and designed by Thomas Archer, it was one of London’s finest baroque churches, until it was destroyed by an incendiary bomb in 1941 and remained in a derelict state for 20 years. Lady Parker of Waddington formed the Friends of St John’s in 1962 and, remarkably, it opened as a concert hall in 1969, with a recital by Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge. I sang in St John’s countless times and heard many other fine concerts there. The reconstruction was brilliant; indeed until writing this piece, I had no idea that it had to be recreated from a bombed out shell. It is lovely to sing in, has decent sight lines and boasts a lovely wine bar down in the crypt.
Finally, two lesser known but brilliant concert halls are the Caird Hall in Dundee and Snape Maltings, near Aldeburgh.
The Caird Hall, named after its benefactor, the jute magnate James Caird, was built between 1914 and 1923, and designed by James Thomson, assisted by Vernon Constable. It has a capacity of 2,300, and is a beautiful rectangular shape, modelled on the Vienna Musikverein. Its acoustic is excellent, and it is one of the finest buildings in Dundee, which has featured recently as one of the IN places to visit in the world! Two interesting facts: I was helped through my Guildhall studies back in the late 70s by the Sir James Caird Travelling Scholarship, and family tradition tells us that my wife’s grandfather’s building company built the hall.
A survey of fine British concert halls where I have sung couldn’t omit the wonderful Snape Maltings Hall, built at the request of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears and which opened in 1967, only to be damaged severely by fire two years later and reopened in 1970. It is a simple shape but with perfect acoustics and sight lines and is one of my favourite places to sing in the UK. Pears and Britten had their own box, and after Britten died, his scarf hung on the wall. After Peter died, I believe his scarf was put alongside that of his beloved Ben. I don’t know if they are still there, but the spirit of the two great musicians permeates the whole Maltings complex.
A final thought today. It’s really a plea to hall managements – leave enough light for your audiences to be able to read their programmes during concerts. In a mistaken desire to allow people to sit in cosy darkness, listening to music in some elysian semi reality, concert halls have generally been plunged into a gloom which renders perusal of the, often very expensive, programmes impossible, thus denying the audience both the chance to follow the words when sung and the possibility of learning about the work being played. I rest my case!
Next time, concert halls abroad.
