Very satisfying concert from the Henschel Quartet last night, and good to hear a relay from St John's Smith Square. The first broadcast I've heard from SJSQ in ages. Raises the question of how the BBC does its business with venues. Do they have sports-style 'rights deals' for a run of concerts, or is it all negotiated on a per-concert basis? I suspect the former, given the frequency with which some concert halls are featured, and others, such as St. John's, fall out of favour.
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I don't know the answer to this,but I agree it was a super concert.Originally posted by Study Session View Post -
My oh my, that Brahms op 34 is some piece. I couldn't get the work out of my head for at least three months upon first hearing at a university lunchtime concert.Comment
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St Johns is a splendid room for concerts and also recording such as the many made by Decca/Polygram group since the Autumn of 1969. It was restored in the 1960s and the inaugural concert given on October 6th 1969. It isn't of a conventional shape yet has good acoustics.
Decca's engineers [Stan Goodall] found it almost by chance after Kingsway Hall had a ceiling collapse in early September 1969, 5 days before ASMF's Four Seasons Argo recording sessions were due to start, forcing the company to look urgently for an alternative site. One of the trustees of the church restoration project got to hear of the predicament and got in touch with Decca/Argo. The sessions did take place as planned but not at Kingsway. These sessions predated the first public concert by a month.
Part of that story here: ISBN 0 7181 2049 3, pp88-9, 1981 [one author is Neville Marriner's daughter] get one here for 7pence! well worth a read:
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