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Closed to the public for the first time in its 196-year history, the National Gallery has collaborated with the Orchestra to showcase art and music. The resulting video concert, the first of four featuring orchestral players performing chamber music selected to match the paintings, marks the anniversary of the first concert performed by Dame Myra Hess, in honour of the pianist who organised the Gallery’s famous lunchtime concerts during the Second World War.
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Continuing the tradition of playing a concert for an audience living through a time of crisis, the musicians performed in the Gallery’s Barry Rooms, the same location as the wartime lunchtime concerts.But unlike those concerts in front of a live audience in a picture-less gallery that remained open despite the bombs falling, these post-Covid-19 concerts are watched from homes.
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Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, London, says: ’Painting and music are the most natural of partners so this is a very happy collaboration between the National Gallery and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The Myra Hess concerts at the Gallery have acquired an almost mythical status for us and it was music that carried us through the war years. So the opportunity to do something with the London Philharmonic Orchestra during the Covid closure to bring music back to the Gallery and to remember those years when music played such an important role for the population has been an extremely pleasing.”
In this video violist Richard Waters discusses the motivation behind the project.