Gergiev takes music beyond the concert hall

London’s Trafalgar Square has for centuries been an icon of the city. In its centre stands Nelson’s column, flanked by the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and St Martin in the Fields. It is also the home to thousands of pigeons, which will have to move over for the London Symphony Orchestra as principal conductor Valery Gergiev aims to ‘take music beyond the concert hall’.

Sydney can already lay claim to presenting Symphony in the Park, Opera on the Harbour and I Musici in the Royal Botanic Gardens. Is the music compromised? Is the audience focus blurred by everything else that is going on? Or does this strategy really create new audiences?

http://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical-music-news/lso-launches-free-annual-open-air-concerts