Page 38 - Coverage Book_Aurora Orchestra Autumn 2020
P. 38
13 September 2020
Classical review: Aurora
Orchestra at Kings Place in
London
Musicians’ joy uplifted the audience at this ‘reverse Prom’
Inspirational: Nicholas Collon and Aurora at Kings Place
© MONIKA S JAKUBOWSKA/KINGS PLACE
Public concert-giving took a great leap forward with two performances by the Aurora
Orchestra under their inspirational young music director, Nicholas Collon. Aurora performed
Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony on Monday in an old train shed behind King’s Cross and St
Pancras in London, converted into a partially open-air concert space in association with Kings
Place, at which Aurora are one of the resident ensembles.
With audiences seated at safe distances on foldaway chairs and most of the musicians standing, as is
Aurora’s wont, the performance felt like a reverse Prom. Although the sound was modestly
enhanced for listeners further away from the podium, the playing emerged with a physical
immediacy and brilliance even in the reverberant acoustic. Aurora’s by-heart performances have
become a regular feature at the Proms. Indeed, this was a preview of part of Thursday’s audience-
less concert from the Royal Albert Hall, in which the symphony was paired with a BBC
commission, Richard Ayres’s No 52, three pieces about Beethoven, “dreaming, hearing loss and
saying goodbye”, available on iPlayer for three more weeks.
