st.-martin-in-the-fields

Caspian’s parents are big fans of classical music. As a result, growing up, he was only allowed to listen to classical music until he reached junior high school. His parents have quite an extensive collection of classical music recordings, a combination of LPs, tapes (what are those? haha) and CDs. When we originally visited Trafalgar Square and noticed this really beautiful building so we decided to take a closer look. The building is a church called St.-Martin-In-The-Fields. Why did this name sound so familiar?

Classical music buffs will recognize the name because of the Academy at St.-Martin-In-The-Fields, one of the most recorded classical ensembles on the planet. Caspian’s parents’ collection contains many recordings from this very ensemble. In fact, the church was and still is used for many recordings. We picked up a programme schedule and saw that they run a fairly robust concert schedule, and at fairly reasonable prices. In fact, they have a free lunchtime concert series.

Well, we finally got around to attending a concert at St.-Martin-In-The-Fields and are very glad we did! The church is absolutely stunning inside and the pictures we took do not do it one ounce of justice. We opted for the cheapest block of tickets at £6. The ticket lady told us that these seats offer no view whatsoever of the performers. We weren’t sure how correct that was, but decided that we really didn’t need to see the performers to be able to enjoy the experience. So we tried it out. And found that (much to our chagrin) the lady was 100% correct – we couldn’t see anything as the seats were on the balcony and too far back to get any view. As a small bonus, though, because the balcony booths were not sold in our section, we were allowed to move up for the second half.

The performance we attended was the Baroque Festival by the Belmont Ensemble and included concertos by Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, and Marcello. We were very impressed because the violin soloist was pregnant (which pleased Teresa very much) and still performed wonderfully. The oboist was very young but talented and performed Bach’s oboe concerto in D minor without any music. The ensemble included a harpsichord which was also very nice because it’s not often that you get to hear a harpsichord live.

The rest of the summer concert line-up looks impressive as well, with features on Gershwin, Mozart and Purcell. In fact, one of the concerts in August will be by the Academy at St.-Martin-In-The-Fields themselves and we’ll be sure not to miss that!