Every summer for the last 100-something years, BBC has held a classical music festival called the Proms. The generally idea is to make classical music accessible to the public by having several shows per week with tickets starting as low as £5.
I decided to go to one of those shows today. I headed to the Cadogan Hall in Chelsea (in South West London) for the Saturday matinée show with a friend. The show featured three pieces by contemporary composers and I must say that they weren’t the type of songs I’m used to.
The first song was in italian and referenced Dante’s Paradise, the second was quite choppy and random and sounded more like noise than music to me in some parts, and the third was a dramatic retelling of a bible passage (Jacob wrestling with an Angel) and featured a counter-tenor, which I found out today is a man who sings in a high falsetto voice that sounds like a woman.
Anyway, even though the music wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, I would still highly recommend it. Getting tickets was really easy. I just went about 30 minutes before the show to the box office and asked about the standing room tickets. The idea at most shows is that the area in front of the stage becomes a mosh-pit with people paying £5 to watch the show. Today, we actually managed to get seats (though they were near the top of the house and off to the side).
Definitely a decent way to spend a Saturday afternoon in London.
Thrifty Abroad 