Welcome
Will London ever get its grand new concert hall? Things have gone a little quiet of late, presumably while someone scurries around for some cash to fund the odd architectural drawing or feasibility report. Meanwhile, attention has been happily drawn to other classical music bricks-and-mortar stories in, shock horror, places outside of the M25. While London has been getting itself in a spin about a concert hall that won’t even be in the centre of town, things have been going great guns in our second city, where the brand new Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s concert hall has just attracted a £1 million donation; and in BBC Music Magazine’s home of Bristol, St George’s Hall (the best chamber acoustic in the UK, don’t you know?) is on the cusp of opening its new foyer, and work on Colston Hall has begun in earnest. Up in Edinburgh, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, having just signed up the brilliant young Maxim Emelyanychev as its new principal conductor, is one step closer to its new 1,000-seat home with contractors invited in June to submit their interest. All very exciting. But let’s not leave London entirely out of the fun. As you’ll read on p10, the BBC is building a new home for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, to replace the crumbling, cramped Maida Vale Studios. Let’s hope, however, that they don’t entirely bin the venue’s venerable old Compton organ.