Page 25 - Coverage Book_Aurora Orchestra Autumn 2020

the arts desk

08 September 2020
Aurora Orchestra, Collon, West Handyside

Canopy review – energy blasts outside Kings

Cross Waitrose

****

First big UK symphony performance to an audience since lockdown - from
memory
by David NiceTuesday, 08 September 2020

Memorised magic: the Aurora Orchestra's Beethoven 7Both images by Monika S Jakubowska/Kings Place

Blessed are the players and musical organisations who adapt and innovate, for they shall inhabit
the post-lockdown landscape. And while we appreciate the difficulties any orchestra faces in terms
of re-opening logistics and costs, livestreams have their limit. Kings Place, under the aegis of
which this event was held, Snape Maltings, Bold Tendencies in Peckham's Multi-Storey Car Park,
Scottish Opera, Battersea Park Bandstand Chamber Music, the Fidelio Orchestra Cafe and the

Wigmore Hall, admitting a public very soon, are the heroes now.
Even the thrill this audience member got from the first A major chord of Beethoven’s most energetic symphony,
the Seventh, was worth a hundred online experiences. There was even a Promming element; as passers-by,
many with their Waitrose shopping, noted with surprise what was going on, and while some sped by as if this
were not the remarkable happening it undoubtedly was, many stood at the side to hear the whole thing. All
players who could stood, too, which always ups the energy. Beethoven, as the Aurora's main man Nicholas
Collon (pictured below) observed in his spoken introduction, has had his anniversary year partly scuppered,
though it's worth noting that an awful lot of him surfaced right up to 15 March, the last day of concert life as we
knew it, when Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia recreated the mammoth 1808 spectacular featuring so