Author: Purple Brolly

After the WW2 bombing of London, the County Council decided that a new, up-to-the-minute, airy, Scandinavian-style concert hall was just the thing to lift people’s spirits. The Royal Festival Hall was thus sited on the southern bank of the River Thames in Lambeth. It was the only permanent building in the ‘Festival of Britain’ exhibition promoting British scientific and engineering expertise and in 1988 it received Grade I listing.

Some 63,000 cu.yds. of material were excavated and half that amount in concrete was put back during construction. Another major element was steel, 260 tons of it in the roof alone. Critics wondered whether the time and resources would be better used for much-needed homes and factories instead, especially during the severe winter of 1949/50 when no expense was spared to maintain the temperature required for concreting operations to continue.

Nevertheless, King George VI (1895-1952) opened it in May 1951 and it has hosted countless world-class concerts ever since. It currently has 2,410 auditorium seats, plus bars and dining areas off its large foyer and riverside balconies. The original contract price of £1,628,260 is dwarfed by the cost of several refurbishments (or ‘restorations’) it has undergone, but these have preserved its status as an uplifting refuge from city bustle.

(Top image: Paul Robinson at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Edward Benjamin Britten (1913-76) was born in Suffolk and spent most of his life there. In 1948 he co-founded Suffolk’s Aldeburgh Festival in a venue close to his childhood home and from 1957 he lived in a 17th-century Aldeburgh farmhouse with 5 acres, together with his partner, tenor Peter Pears (1910-86). On being awarded a life peerage just before his death, he chose the title ‘Baron Britten of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk’, so great was his affinity for the area.

Britten began composing from the age of 5 and grew up knowing exactly the career he wished to pursue. At age 16 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music and by the time he turned 18 he had written over 700 musical pieces. He was influenced by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell (1659-95) but was rather dismissive of later luminaries Elgar and Vaughan Williams.

Britten played piano and viola, and wrote song cycles and orchestral works but his most celebrated compositions were his 16 operas, the first of which was ‘Peter Grimes’ (1945), the last being ‘Death in Venice’ (1975). With these he began a new English-language pathway for the genre. His musical style was characterised by clarity and tension provided by contrasts, laced with childhood reflections.

(Top image: Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)