London's Classical Music Venues

The English are seldom thought of as an especially musical people—unlike the Germans, say, or the Italians—and London's artistic reputation is based chiefly on its theatrical and literary traditions. But the city's classical music scene is astonishingly vibrant, and on any given evening there are literally dozens of concerts, staged in an astounding variety of venues.

There are reasons for this: London's musical culture was immeasurably enriched by the influx of Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria in the 1930s; the city has long been a center of the recording industry; and, in its contemporary manifestation, London is a uniquely cosmopolitan place.

Nothing better illustrates London's love affair with classical music than The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts—universally known as "The Proms"—an eight-week summer season sponsored by the BBC, held annually since 1895 and self-described as "The World's Greatest Classical Music Festival." This year, from July 15-September 10, more than 100 events are planned, a majority being staged in the Royal Albert Hall, a vast red-brick Victorian amphitheater adjacent to Kensington Gardens (and a 15-minute stroll from either Knightsbridge or Park Lane.)

This means that no matter how distinguished the orchestra, conductor or soloist, if you queue, you have a reasonable chance of getting in.

The Albert Hall has a capacity of 5,544 concertgoers, but up to 1,400 tickets are sold on the evening of each event. This means that no matter how distinguished the orchestra, conductor or soloist, if you queue, you have a reasonable chance of getting in. Furthermore, the last-minute tickets are mostly for standing places in a central arena and sell for the distinctly modest price of $8.

Nightly, this attracts crowds of young people, collectively known as "Promenaders," who greatly contribute to the atmosphere inside the hall. As with most Harper members, our queuing days are over, but nowadays, it is simple enough to purchase tickets online. And there are few more pleasant ways of spending a warm summer evening than strolling from your hotel through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to experience a world-class concert and to be part of the infectious excitement.

At any season of the year, London stages chamber music recitals in a number of more intimate venues. One of our favorites is the Wigmore Hall, located in the heart of the West End just 15 minutes' walk from either Claridge's or The Connaught hotel. Internationally renowned for its near-perfect acoustics, the Wigmore Hall opened in 1901 and was designed by Thomas Edward Collcutt (coincidentally the architect of The Savoy hotel).

For a period during the 1990s and the early years of the current century, musical London was in love with the great pianist Alfred Brendel, a longtime resident of the city, and the first artist to record the complete solo piano works of Beethoven. One evening, we were lucky enough to be given two tickets to see Brendel at the Wigmore Hall, and we have been addicted to both the venue and Beethoven's piano sonatas ever since.

Our other favorite setting for chamber music is St. John's, Smith Square, located in Westminster close to the Houses of Parliament. The church dates from 1728 and is regarded as one of the finest works of English Baroque architecture. (It was designed by Thomas Archer, who had the extreme misfortune to live permanently in the shadows of his illustrious contemporaries, Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor.) Unusually, St. John's features four corner towers, which led Charles Dickens to describe the building unkindly as like "some petrified monster, frightful and gigantic, on its back with its legs in the air."

Presumably, Dickens would not have been in the least upset on the night of May 10, 1941, when the church received a direct hit from an incendiary bomb and was completely gutted. For the next 20 years, St. John's stood a ruin, open to the sky, and it was not until 1965 that work began to reinvent the surviving structure as a concert hall. The inaugural recital was given in October 1969 by the great Australian soprano—and London's adopted daughter—Dame Joan Sutherland.

We often stroll to St. John's for an evening concert, generally beginning our walk in St. James's Park, before pausing in Parliament Square to pay our respects to the statue of Abraham Lincoln. After a few minutes in Westminster Abbey, or sitting on a bench in Royal Victoria Gardens watching the river traffic on the Thames, we head over to the tranquil and leafy enclave of Smith Square. However, St. John's also stages delightful lunchtime concerts, frequently attended by parliamentarians taking a short break from managing the affairs of the nation.

At such times, the city's inhabitants seems to take to the streets and parks en masse, reveling in their liberation as only people can who know that gray days and a long winter lie just below the horizon.

London's climate is famously fickle, but in most years, there is a spell of warm, sunny weather in July and August. At such times, the city's inhabitants seems to take to the streets and parks en masse, reveling in their liberation as only people can who know that gray days and a long winter lie just below the horizon. Then, we invariably try to obtain tickets for the open-air Opera Holland Park.

Holland Park is a wonderful 500-acre enclave bounded to the south by Kensington and to the north by Notting Hill. Originally, it was the estate of Holland House, a fine red-brick mansion built in 1605 for Sir Walter Cope, and in the 19th century, the scene of a celebrated literary salon orchestrated by Lord and Lady Holland and frequented by the likes of Macaulay, Disraeli, Dickens and Sir Walter Scott. Alas, in September 1940, the house was largely destroyed in an air raid. It was not until 1988 that a canopy was installed to cover part of the ruin and the space became the setting for low-budget opera productions.

Such were the modest beginnings of what is now a major music venue, as well as a fixture on London's summer social scene. In 2007, a new canopy was installed to cover an auditorium of 1,000 seats. Opera Holland Park is now in partnership with the City of London Sinfonia, and each season there are more than 50 performances, sung in the original language and augmented by subtitles. Although the company has specialized in the more obscure reaches of the operatic repertoire, more familiar and well-loved works are also part of the program. Productions for summer 2011 will include three Italian rarities—Mascagni's "L'amico Fritz," Catalani's "La Wally" and Puccini's "La Rondine"—but also "Rigoletto," "Don Pasquale" and "The Marriage of Figaro."

Back in 1904, a German musical scholar, Oscar Adolf Hermann Schmitz, infamously described England as "Das Land ohne Musik ("The Land Without Music"). It was an uncharitable remark for which the English have never forgiven him. Were he to return to London in 2011, Herr Schmitz might get a pleasant and unexpected surprise.