The Hanover Square Quartet, Debbie, Poppy, Becky and Emma, who will be playing for us on Sunday 7th May, focus on music composed and performed from the 1770s to the late 1800s – so the pieces that they will be playing might well have featured in a concert at the massively popular Hanover Square Rooms.
Book here for 7th May concert
Quartet in Eb Major by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel
Quartet in E Minor by Emilie Mayer
Quartet in F Minor Op. 80 by Felix Mendelssohn
The Hanover Square Rooms
The ‘Rooms’ at the north-west corner of Hanover Square just off London’s Regent Street, were acquired in 1774 by Sir John Gallini, an Italian by extraction but a Swiss by birth, who, building on the contacts made while teaching dancing to the young royal family, had made himself a tidy fortune.
The ‘Rooms’ included a lofty concert room, about 24 metres long by 9 metres wide. It had high windows and an arched ceiling and seated up to 900. It had, apparently, excellent acoustics but was sometimes criticised for its ‘poor amenities and illumination’.
The Rooms opened in 1775 with a subscription concert backed by JC Bach and CF Abel, originally partners in the venture. However, two years later Gallini had bought them both out although they continued to support the Rooms which flourished under the patronage of George III. The king, an enthusiastic supporter, not only occupied the royal box with his Queen and family night after night, but would write out the programmes of the performances with his own hand and had a room added to the side of his box called the Queen’s Tea Room.
The Rooms soon became the ‘go to’ concert venue of the era, hosting all of the leading musicians of the day: Haydn, Hummel, Harriet Wainwright (whose opera Comala premiered in 1792), Felix Mendelssohn (first performance of Scottish Symphony), Niccolò Paganini (performing to empty benches, much to his chagrin, 1834), Franz Liszt (1840), Anton Rubinstein (1842), Joseph Joachim (performing the Beethoven violin concerto at the age of twelve), Berlioz, Clara Schumann, and Jenny Lind (the ‘Swedish nightingale’) and many others.
In 1804 the ‘Concerts of Antient Music’, established in 1776 by ‘a committee of noblemen and gentlemen’ moved from their headqurters in the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket to the Hanover Square Rooms where they were to remain until 1848. Although the strictness of their rule ‘forbidding the playing of any composition less than twenty-five years old without the forfeiture of a considerable sum from the director of the night’ meant that they did not find universal favour. In 1823 the Royal Academy of Music also started to use the Rooms and in 1833 the Philharmonic Concerts, established by Messrs. Cramer and Co. under the auspices of the then Prince Regent in 1813, also took up residence.
Despite all of this musical activity the Rooms still found time to host a number of lectures, ‘readings’, and public meetings. In 1798 Miss Linwood exhibited her ‘needlework pictures’ and in 1838–9, Dr. Chalmers, the celebrated Scotch divine, delivered a series of lectures on the Church of England.
In 1845, on the death of Sir John’s nieces, the Misses Gallini, their freehold interest in Hanover Square Rooms was bought by Mr. Robert Cocks, the eminent musical publisher who continued to lease them out for performances. But by the 1870s their moment had passed and in 1874 the Royal Academy of Music ‘under the direction of Mr. Walter Macfarren performed the very last full orchestral and choral concert’.
The premises were sold the following year and converted into an extremely gracious and spacious gentleman’s club. This flourished for 25 years before it closed in 1900 and the building was demolished.
For a great deal more detail on the Hanover Square Rooms and the surrounding streets, see the British-History.ac.uk site and Wikipedia.
Book here for 7th May concert
6.30 for drinks; 7pm for the concert; 8.15 buffet supper – all included in the ticket price of £28
Upcoming concerts
Sunday 11th June – Highgate Society Lunchtime concert – 12 noon – The Reliables
£15 to include copious quantities of Bucks Fizz – Book here
Thursday 13th July – evening – Thomas Hardy poems set to song
A new song cycle by Arthur Keegan for guitar and voice setting five of Hardy’s poems about his first wife Emma.
£28 to include buffet supper and wine
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