The many reasons I love The Proms

If there’s one thing to remind you that life isn’t long enough it’s classical music. So many composers, such little time. Not that that stops me trying to listen to as many pieces as possible. Sadly classical music often faces charges of elitism, understandable considering the extravagant cost of concert tickets. Which is one of many reasons I love The Proms. For three months every year the Albert Hall, amongst other venues, showcases a staggeringly wide variety of music. And not only is every concert broadcast and recorded, but tickets are available at refreshingly affordable prices, making the music accessible to anyone just as Henry Wood originally intended.

Ever since its inception in 1895 the Proms has aimed at as wide an audience as possible. This has led to concerts featuring popular music, which though criticised, are intended to attract an otherwise indifferent public. And if some of the uninitiated then decide to go beyond their comfort zone and listen to unfamiliar composers then the policy has succeeded. This year I myself had a number of serendipitous encounters. After a lifetime of incomprehension the joys of Liszt were finally unlocked to me. I was disturbingly thrilled by Prokofiev’s demonic Seven, They are Seven for the first time. I listened to entirety of Dvorak’s 8^th Symphony, appreciating the genius of the other movements besides the adagio. Even Monteverdi’s Vespers, one of my favourite pieces of music and in my opinion one of the greatest achievements of the European musical canon, featured plainchant antiphons I had never heard previously. Even with my own musical background I still find The Proms studded with moments of discovery. For those with little knowledge of classical music, it must be like entering a vast new universe.

And for anyone who accuses classical music of being boring and stuffy, they should have seen me after Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Never have I been so moved by a performance, classical or otherwise. After standing up and applauding for ten minutes I floated out of the Albert Hall, gliding towards South Kensington Tube Station. All along Exhibition Road I hummed the theme to myself, blissfully unaware of the odd looks being directed at me. Entering the station a woman behind joined in, and laughing I remarked that I knew where she had been earlier. Rarely in my life have I felt such joie de vivre as leaving that concert, and anything which leaves such spontaneous happiness deserves celebrating. 

Review: 'The Prime of Monteverdi'

If there is one venue in London ideal for Venetian music it must be St. Brides. Both its gilded ceiling and baroque woodcarvings give a definite whiff of La Serenissima and its antique grandeur. Even the watery light coming through its windows on a rainy day seem to suggest the lagoon, though many Venetophiles would argue than rain falling in the street is a poor replacement for streets made of water. 

Musicke in the Ayre chose well to hold its concert dedicated to Monteverdi and his Venetian period here on the 8th of September. Called ‘The Prime of Monteverdi’, this seemed ironic as only half the program consisted of his work. The problem though with including other composers alongside such a genius is that they can rarely match him. This occasion was no exception. As gifted and capable as Alessandro Grandi or Flamminio Corradi were, their compositions lack the frisson of Monteverdi's work and can be easily dismissed as pleasing fluff. Several of the lute compositions, including Giovanni Kapsberger’s Canario and P.P. Melli’s Dimi Amore, were pleasant but borderline dull.

Monteverdi himself of course did not disappoint. Pulchra es, the first piece, sent shivers down my spine as did the plaintive Si dolce e’l tormento, its primal wail reminiscent of Lamento della ninfa. Special mention goes to soprano Alysha Paterson, who executed the excruciating florid passages of Quel sguardo sdegnosetto with a confident grace lacking in more celebrated singers. The cherry in the cake was the Pur ti miro, the final duet in Monteverdi’s opera L’incoronazione di Poppea, though I was shaken after being informed that its real composer might have been Benedetto Ferrari. An enjoyable event, I only wish that the concert had stuck true to its title and focussed more on the man himself. 

John Singer Sargent: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Watercolour

In my opinion watercolours were always a second-rate artform. I’m sure my contempt dated back to primary school art lessons. The clumsy splotches of watery colour, the pools of paint, the ubiquitous brown which seemed to annex every other tone, from a young age I associated watercolours with chaos. And not creative chaos either but sheer anarchy, albeit of a watered-down variety. As far as I was concerned watercolours barely even classified as art, unless your idea of a masterpiece was a soggy sheet of crumbling paper.

Therefore when I learnt of the Sargent: The Watercolours exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery I was conflicted. John Singer Sargent, one of the defining figures of fin-de-siècle opulence and painter of the startlingly seductive Madame X, seemed an eternity away from the messy and mediocre world of watercolours. But having seen some tantalising glimpses of the work on display I bit the bullet and visited.

Never in my life have I seen watercolours created with such delicate and effervescent beauty. Sargent’s palette seems to sparkle out of the frame in a way that oil paintings could only envy. I could feel the Mediterranean sun toasting his Venetian palazzos, while swaying with the water surging underneath. The way he draped light over his landscapes addsan extra layer of ephemeral gorgeousness to the underlying view, like a piece of couture over a naked body. The evening sun reflecting off Santa Maria della Salute smoulders sensuously, as if the church itself throws ‘come-hither’ eyes in our direction. These pictures peer out from a dream landscape, one too perfect, too idealised for our own universe.

I entered the exhibition with a distaste for watercolours: I left intoxicated with their beauty. I wandered if I should give them another shot myself. But I doubt I could rival Sargent’s gift for the sublime. I might just leave it to the experts.  

London's heritage is becoming elitist

Earlier this year, walking down one of the many interminable tunnels found in every Tube station, I noticed a poster on the wall. I don’t normally pay much attention to these ads, whether they be for kitsch West End musical revivals or photographs of Her Majesty in front of Windsor Castle (perhaps visitors who don’t see Queenie should sue The Royal Collections Trust for false advertising?) But this one was lucky enough to be scrutinised by me. There wasn’t anything extraordinary about it: a clumsy collage of Westminster Abbey mobbed by a crowd of dead celebrities, including Charlotte Bronte, King James I, etc. Though my interest was piqued, this had nothing to do with the who’s-who of dead Britons. I’d been to Poets Corner of course but had no intention of returning. Not because I disliked the Abbey but because I refused to pay the princely sum of £20 to enter, £22 if bought at the door. So looking at this trite poster I felt outraged that despite feebly protesting maintenance costs, the Abbey was still able to splash out on a London Underground advertising campaign. Not long after seeing this poster another ad for the Abbey popped up on my internet browser. This was evidently a multi-pronged strategy.

Westminster Abbey advertisement

London’s exhibitions are expensive enough. Tate Modern’s Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power will set you back £15. The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition costs £14, and even with an Artfund card you only get a one pound reduction. But it seems that the nation’s most iconic buildings are being barred to all but the wealthiest. Admission fees to museums and other public institutions has long been a contentious issue, and the allocation of state funding subject to the whims of successive governments. Labour has generally been in favour of universal admission while the Conservatives have opposed it. Under Thatcher many national museums were pressured into introducing fees, around half caving in while others, including the British Museum and National Gallery resisted. Those that did introduce fees however suffered declines in visitor numbers, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum. After it started charging entry in 1997 its visitor numbers had halved by the following year. But in 2009 Art Fund discovered that the V&A, which had then scrapped admission fees by 2001, saw its visitor numbers more than double over the following years. Sheer numbers can be a problem too though, in which case charging for admission can reduce pressure. One of the reasons Westminster Abbey introduced fees in the late 1990’s was in response to the swelling numbers of visitors. Back then it was referred to as ‘the Westminster Waiting Room’ due to its popularity with continental touring groups, who would meet there before returning to Waterloo Station. But on the other hand, can this policy be too successful? Ten years ago St. Pauls admitted that fees had risen by 25% to compensate for falling visitor numbers. Understandable as 85% of the cathedral’s income comes from tourism, but wouldn’t further increasing prices only further reduce tourist numbers? Perhaps they should try reducing prices. Speaking personally, I would visit more if a ticket didn’t cost the equivalent of an easyJet flight.

But unlike national museums historic places of worship receive minimal government funding, despite the Church of England alone being responsible for almost half of the country’s Grade I listed buildings, three of which are designated World Heritage Sites (Durham Cathedral, York Minster and Westminster Abbey for the curious amongst you). But it does seem a strange coincidence that those religious sites which do charge are also the highest on a tourist agenda. St. Albans, less than twenty minutes by train from St. Pancras, boasts an ancient abbey church after which it was named. Well, the saint to whom the church was dedicated but I’m being pedantic. The abbey church, now the city’s cathedral, is an astonishing testament to a lost England of the Middle Ages. On the piers lining the nave, hidden by whitewash for centuries as in so many other English churches, are depictions of the saints. Before the Reformation pilgrims would make their devotions before these sacred images, gradually passing deeper into the abbey’s heart and approaching the relics within. Behind the presbytery the tombs of Saints Alban and Amphibalus have been reconstructed, quite literally relics of a distant era. Like a time machine this extraordinary place takes you back to a very different England, a land which still revered the saints and practised pilgrimage. So how much do you have to pay to enter this portal to the Middle Ages? Nothing, not a penny.

  

St. Albans Cathedral

Even closer to the tourist bastions of St Pauls and Westminster Abbey is Southwark Cathedral. The present building was largely constructed between the 13^th and 15^th centuries, though with inevitable Victorian alterations. It is associated with many of Shakespeare’s contemporaries such as the dramatist John Fletcher, who was buried inside. And yet despite this illustrious history and its prime real estate location the cathedral continues to allow free access to visitors (St. Pauls likes to make a virtue out of allowing worshippers in for free, the same way our charitable government generously permits us to breathe its air gratis). Southwark cathedral is not high on the criteria of most tourists so if it did start charging £20 for access then it would become a place of literally undisturbed tranquillity. And yet surely it’s still subject to the same maintenance costs as its more celebrated sister across the Thames.

Southwark Cathedral

Just last weekend, anxiously tapping my feet as the escalator at Euston squeaked upwards, anxious not to miss my train to Liverpool but weighed down with luggage, I noticed another ad on the walls. Every one of the thirty screens lined above the handrail featured a shot of the Imperial State Crown, before panning out to a child gawping at it idiotically. To see the Crown Jewels though will set you back £24.80 (£21.50 if bought online prior), more than three times the minimum wage for those aged 25 and older. Perhaps the Tower of London wouldn’t need to advertise if it didn’t insist on bankrupting the very people hoping to get in. Just a thought.