150 Years of Classical Music at Colston Hall

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Colston Hall has been Bristol's home of music since 1867 and has been a mecca for classical musicians for 150 years. From Rachmaninoff to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, there have been some breathtaking performances through the years. BBC Music Magazine Editor Oliver Condy takes a step through the archives and gives a taste of this iconic venues rich classical music heritage.

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Transcript
Colston Hall has been a mecca for classical musicians ever since it opened in 1867 – and has continued to present impressive line-ups of international artists, despite being ravaged by devastating fires in 1898 and in 1945 when the culprit wasn’t one of Hitler’s incendiary bombs, but a discarded cigarette.

In fact, it was those fires that also devastated Colston Hall’s early archives, so not a lot is known about who performed at the hall before around 1928. But what we do know is that a triennial musical festival was founded in 1873, featuring performances by the now long disbanded Bristol Symphony Orchestra – the 1912 festival even featured a complete Wagner Ring cycle over just four days. Quite an event. But what’s even more extraordinary is those performances were not the only events on those days – symphonies by Schubert and Tchaikovsky as well as oratorios by Elgar and Mendelssohn were performed in the mornings alongside concertos featuring the great violinist Fritz Kreisler and pianist Paderewski. When rehearsals were supposed to take place, I have no idea…

But it was the 1920s and 30s that really saw the hall’s heyday, fully restored after the first fire. Concerts were promoted by one Charles Lockier, the man who was to bring The Beatles to Bristol just 30 years later. And the line-up of classical superstars was impressive – in 1932, a 15-year-old Yehudi Menuhin, taking in tour of UK cities, Bristol among them. His recital featured works by Bach, Tartini and Lalo. ‘All the women’, said one critic, ‘fell in love with the fair-haired 15-year-old boy with the profile of a Greek god.’

Rachmaninov, the most famous and perhaps the greatest pianist of his time, performed solo recitals here in Nov 1929 and the same month the following year, with a mixture of his own music and works by Chopin and Schumann among others. And both time, the audience took the chance to demand his most famous piece as an encore – his C-sharp minor Prelude. As one critic wrote afterwards, ‘in the wilds of the African jungle, and in the ice-bound huts of the Eskimos, that now hackneyed composition is known.’

The British Women’s Symphony Orchestra made its first appearance at Colston Hall in March 1932 – this was an ensemble that was founded on back of the notion that women were woefully underrepresented in Symphony Orchestras across the land. Its review the following day didn’t mince its words: ‘There was excellent playing in the Symphony, and those that imagine that a women’s orchestra must be inferior to a male orchestra are making a mistake.’

When the Colston Hall was rebuilt after its second fire and reopened in 1951, complete with its four-manual Harrison & Harrison organ, which is still in constant use today, the Royal Philharmonic and Sir Thomas Beecham were invited to play for the opening gala concert, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 providing the rousing conclusion to the evening.

And it was in the 1960s that the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra started making regular appearances here – a tradition that happily continues to this day, as does the hall’s power to attract the very finest classical music talent from across the world. It’s been an eventful 150 years – here’s to equally exciting times to come. Without the fires, of course…

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