The Full Score
Tentative steps are being made to bring performance back to venues
The latest news from around the classical music world
Slowly but surely, concert venues and opera houses across the world are welcoming performers and audiences back, as classical music adjusts to life in the light of the COVID-19 outbreak. In some instances musicians are performing on stage to empty venues, but broadcast live to listeners at home; in other cases audience members are present, but seated at safe distances away from each other.
In the UK, Wigmore Hall has been filled with the sound of voices and instruments since 1 June, with a series of lunchtime concerts broadcast on Radio 3. A recital by pianist Stephen Hough was the first of 20 concerts announced by the London venue, all of which are to be performed by musicians who live within close distance and will be able to travel without using public transport.
‘The health and safety of our sta and the musicians will always be Wigmore Hall’s foremost concern,’ says John Gilhooly, director of Wigmore Hall, whose seats will all be unfilled during the streamed concerts. ‘I am very grateful to BBC Radio 3 and every musician taking part in these concerts, under the safest possible conditions. Through this series we bring great live music from our acclaimed acoustic to every corner of the nation and overseas.’
Elsewhere, venues are tentatively allowing audiences back. In Wiesbaden, Germany in May, bass Günther Groissböck and pianist Alexandra Goloubitskaia performed Schubert and Mahler to a mask-wearing, socially distanced audience of 200 at the State Theatre of Hesse – an auditorium that seats 1,000. ‘At the beginning it felt like an art installation, an experiment,’ Groissböck told the New York Times. ‘But from song to song, it very quickly became something very human.’
Conductor Paavo Järvi has revealed that Estonia’s Pärnu Festival will be open for business with reduced audiences (see p32). In Italy, organisers of the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro have announced that their event will also take place, with the orchestra seated in the Teatro Rossini stalls and the audience in the boxes. The same country’s Ravenna Festival will be hosting audiences of up to 250 people at the openair Rocca Brancaleone fortress.
More will doubtless follow suit. The halls may not yet be alive with the sound of music, but they are at least no longer completely silent.
Audience members are present, but seated at safe distances from each other