Don’t play this down the pub
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
I had high hopes of this album, an attempt by period musicians to recreate the kind of stuff that might — repeat, might — have been performed in London pubs during the early 18th century…
Read on here.
And here.
Small scale private concerts in pub’s private rooms were common events. In the mid 1980s Jeremy Barlow and others successfully recreated this at the Market Porter near London Bridge, using historical woodwind with harpsichord continuo.
“I had high hopes….”
Were they realized, Norman?
The slow movement of Rimsky-Korsakov’s First Symphony was given its first performance on a pub piano in Gravesend, played by the composer himself. You don’t get that kind of thing down at the pub these days!