Ten minutes a day to get us through the crisis
After being forced to cancel its concerts because of the Covid-19 outbreak, Arundel’s Hanover Band has come up with an innovative way to bring its music to the public on lockdown. Ten@10 will see the musicians of the internationally-renowned period instrument orchestra take it in turns to perform ten minutes of classical music in their own homes. The videos will be released online at 10am every day for music lovers around the world to enjoy. The Band had been due to celebrate its 40th anniversary on March 31 but the coronavirus pandemic meant all celebrations and concerts had to be postponed to later in the year. Band managing director Stephen Neiman, from
Brighton, said: “Ten@10 is a series of ultra-mini online music concerts which will give both classic and baroque enthusiasts, as well as those new to the genre, access to a bite-sized chunks of classical music every day that we are on lockdown. “We have world-class musicians in The Hanover Band who are currently at home, unable to perform as part of the orchestra ensemble because of Covid-19, but who can still play online. Listeners around the globe will have the chance to hear some wonderful classical music, played in a rather unusual way, from the comfort of their own home.” The ten-minute pieces of music, along with excerpts of previous Band concerts, will be released each day on The Hanover Band’s social media pages for everyone to enjoy – @thehanoverband on Twitter, www.facebook. com/thehanoverband for Facebook – as well as on
The Band’s website, www. thehanoverband.com “The Band will keep releasing music until the lockdown is relaxed and its planned concerts can be resumed. All concerts until July have currently been postponed.” Stephen added: “Music is wonderful for improving your mood and helping you through darker times, and at the moment we all need something to lift the spirits while social distancing is in place. “We are living through an unprecedented crisis and although we can no longer perform live, this is the next best thing for now. “With all our musicians staying home we thought it would be a nice way to bring classical music to life for a wider audience and to still mark our 40th anniversary.” As well as celebrating its anniversary, The Band has a number of events planned throughout the year to mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, cirumstances permitting. Beethoven In The City is a series of concerts at livery halls throughout London this year when The Band will play all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies, concluding with Beethoven’s 9th on December 16. They are also hoping to play the Arundel Festival. The Hanover Band was founded by the late Caroline Brown. She was fascinated by Beethoven’s music and formed The Band in 1980 to perform and record his works as they would have been heard when he was alive, on period instruments in venues concerts-goers of the day would have been accustomed to. Caroline died of cancer of the appendix two years ago, but before she passed away, she planned the concerts for The Band’s 40th anniversary and Beethoven’s 250th anniversary in meticulous detail.