LONDON PRESS SERVICE INFORMS
Summer of Art & Music at London Southbank Rebirth
A summer of celebrations is planned for the arts-centred south bank of
the River Thames in London, as extensive multi-million pound redevelopments reach
completion.
The reopening, in June 2007, of the Royal Festival Hall, a grade-one
listed (protected) building, and a prime venue for music events across the spectrum, will
herald a packed programme of world-class concerts, recitals, exhibitions and performances.
Originally opened in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain, this
controversial, modernist concrete-and-glass building was closed in 2004 to allow
renovations costing 91 million pounds to begin.
The main transformation has been of the principal concert hall that now
has state-of-the-art acoustic control; a larger, deeper, hydraulically controlled stage,
and redesigned proscenium arch to cater better for opera and dance events. There is also
new, extra-comfortable seating with more leg room.
Spacious foyers, rooftop entertaining areas and river terraces promise
to make visits to concerts, recitals, dance and other arts events exciting and memorable.
The improvements also include an education centre with studio and performance spaces,
better access, with a glass lift to all levels, and a new riverside cafй.
To ensure that the distinctive “vibe” and character of the building
is retained, redevelopment architects Allies & Morrison have been working with some of
the original designers, chosen at the time for their youth and advanced ideas. They
include one of the United Kingdom’s most respected and admired furniture designers,
Robin Day, who was responsible for the seating.
To mark its new beginnings, the inaugural event at the Royal Festival
Hall (RFH) on 11 June 2007 will be a unique concert featuring 250 musicians from all four
of its “resident” orchestras.
Bright new era: this is how London’s Royal Festival Hall – part of
the arts-oriented Southbank Centre,
by the Thames – is expected to look after reopening in June 2007 after extensive
renovations.
These are the Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the
London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, all of which have been
individually busy performing concerts at other key locations in the Southbank Centre
complex, such as the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room. But the opening-night
concert at the RFH will be the first time that they have all played together.
There follows a schedule that will go on not only throughout the summer
but into autumn and winter and beyond, of musical events such as new productions of
Sweeney Todd (July 5-7), and Carmen Jones (July 25 to September 2), and two landmark
festivals celebrating the work of 20th-century composer Luigi Nono (August to March 2008),
and Olivier Messiaen (throughout 2008), and a range of new commissions and premieres.
Marshall Marcus, head of music, said: “Our aim is to make the
Southbank Centre the most dynamic arts centre in the world for classical music. From
Daniel Barenboim’s pioneering Beethoven piano sonata series, to the UK premiere of Luigi
Nono’s masterpiece Prometeo, the programme brings together world-class artists in
programmes that epitomise Southbank Centre’s blend of tradition and cutting-edge
innovation.”
Southbank’s artistic director Jude Kelly added: “We are blessed
with having four resident orchestras and a wonderful array of international leaders and
musicians to work with. I am particularly delighted that Christoph von Dohnбnyi, Vladimir
Jurowski, and Esa Pekka Salonen will be joining us for the opening week and the
renaissance of Southbank Centre.”
The celebrations will involve not just the Royal Festival Hall but all
the Southbank Centre’s buildings and cover all the visual and performance arts. At the
Hayward Gallery (opened in 1968, reopened in 2003 following a 1.8m pounds foyer
extension), for example, the first major London showing of the work of foremost UK
sculptor Antony Gormley is to be staged from 17 May to 27 August 2007. A series of
previously unseen monumental works specially created for the Hayward’s spaces, and
including suspended figures made from light-infused webs of steel, will be on show, along
with works from the last three decades.
This imaginative exhibition will extend outside the Southbank complex
to embrace other areas of the capital: sculptures by Gormley will be sited on rooftops and
walkways across central London, making it “one of the largest ever urban public art
commissions”.
Also at the Hayward, from October – December, will be an exhibition
entitled Painting of Modern Life, that will look at how photographic imagery is used in
contemporary art. Curated by Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff, it will include
universally known photo-inspired works from the early 1960s by artists such as Andy Warhol
and Gerhard Richter.
Another first at the Southbank Centre this celebratory summer will be
the London Literature Festival in July, with a wide-ranging programme featuring
international writers, commissioned works, debate and discussion. Freedom of expression
will be a recurring theme throughout the two weeks of the festival.
Lovers of the best of modern pop music will also have good reason to
visit the new-look Royal Festival Hall. This year’s nine-day Meltdown Festival has UK
rock icon Jarvis Cocker, leader of the band Pulp, as artistic director, and he will be
mixing artists and art forms in a programme that promises to be exhilarating but is yet to
be announced.
Аnother first will held at the Southbank Centre when World London will
investigate how different styles of music went to the UK through people arriving to live
there from all over the globe. “It is a celebration of the traditional music that has
been kept alive by London’s diverse communities, including calypso, juju, steel band,
bebop and samba,” said a spokesperson. “It marks the huge contribution this array of
music styles has had on the city, and looks at the impact of the cross-pollination of
styles.”
The new-look Royal Festival Hall, the improvements to exterior areas of
the complex, and the construction of a glass-fronted extension building to create offices
and free up space inside the hall for public use, is not the end of the story. More
schemes are proposed for the next 10 years to overhaul the Hayward and the adjacent Queen
Elizabeth Hall.
By Liz Clark
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