‘Prefect addition to the glowing riot of culture and glitter that is Pride’
Right, I’ll hold up my red-nailed hands. This review is shamefully late, but your reviewer is but a simple homosexual. A man hopefully a little unlike you, considering all the effort I put into rampant individuality-but a human nevertheless. Drinking, overindulging, struggling through the subsequent Pride bacchanal, taking days to recover (because 21 was many years ago).
But this “girls just wanna have fun-un” attitude feels fitting for the glowing riot of culture and glitter that is Pride, doesn’t it? I hope my editor agrees. However, if you-like many of my friends-feel aged, energised, or otherwise inclined away from the hammering footfalls of the traditional central London Gay Pride, there are plenty of options in the rest of the big wide Emerald City. Oliver Zeffman’s Festival of Queer Classical Music is a classy yet surprisingly rambunctious option for the gays in turtlenecks who drink red wine (I joke).
Started in 2023, the event has gone from strength to strength, with concerts in Wigmore Hall, King’s Place, and Wilton’s Music Hall. Now, it’s expanding-with the LA Philharmonic, no less-to the Hollywood Bowl. Rightfully so. As with the fashion and dog-grooming worlds, we fruits have long dominated the classical (either closeted or now proudly out), and finally, the nearly 2,000-seat Barbican Hall is lit up with rainbow lights and delights.
This is my first year (slaps own wrist), so let’s sashay into the evening. I arrived early (making up for lost time) for a pre-Pride warm-up and a free concert (a shocking concept nowadays, isn’t it?). Pianist Edward Picton-Turbervill trots on looking like a gorgeously chic minstrel, followed by a tastefully sequinned baritone Jonathan Eyers, and golden wreathed soprano Harriet Burns (now that’s a dress). Together, they put on half an hour of poetry set to music (Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Mary Wortley Montagu), by the likes of Ricky Ian Gordon, Maud Valérie White, and Leonard Bernstein. Burns’s performance of Jonathan Dove’s Between Your Sheets is both sexy and a little sad (my favourite combo), and she brings all the silliness to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Cuckoo, foreshadowing some later tear-jerking from the famous composer. They finish with an equal parts camp and rousing duet of Stephen Hough’s All Shall Be Well-and so indeed it is.
Jonny Woo stalks onto the stage, looking like a badger in drag with a towering striped wig. She introduces and lambasts the London Symphony Orchestra, playing a game working out the allies from the alphabet mafia. Zeffman strides on, charming in a navy suit and takes his conductors place, and a sigh ripples from the old queens (me and others). And we’re off to the races: Camille Saint-Saëns’s Bacchanale from Samson et Dalila flies off the pages, and we’re transported to ancient Babylonia-orientalism at its most creative. Jennifer Higdon’s Blue Cathedral follows-a memorial to her brother. Bells predominate (unsurprisingly), but also a shrieking beauty-resounding yet mournful, like pigeons shocked out of sleep in the rafters. We flutter and soar, ending with half the orchestra rolling baoding balls in their hands, conjuring up some spirits in a soft and slow ending by a confident composer.
The world premiere of Jake Heggie’s New Work brings mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton-half-shaved head, silver dress, looking like Boudicca-giving the complex opera piece astonishing vivacity. Staccato operatic comedy is tough to pick out every detail, but the sense of a lesbian couple in a rut after two years is both impressive and relatable. After the interval, Barton brings many a queer (me again) to sobbing tears with Harold Arlen’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow, giving it her own operatic twist-powerfully drowning out the audience’s sniffles like a pro.
More Saint-Saëns (Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix again from Samson et Dalila) eddies along pleasantly. The only bump for me was George Benjamin’s Dream of the Song. Setting Federico García Lorca’s poetry to music sounds ideal-and with Cameron Shahbazi’s athletic, whooping countertenor, I should have been sold-but the piece comes across a little bitty and aimless. Even the thundering crescendo of the Tenebrae choir couldn’t fully pull me in.
Still, we’re pulled back onside with Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake Suite-and, as you can imagine, this goes down like beers on game night (how did you like my heterosexual analogy?). The leaping forest scenes, the swelling lake dance, the long extended necks and soft longing-all perfectly understood by queers and steers alike. Flawless.
As I sat drying my tears, I noticed a couple in front of me, rubbing shoulders and darting loving glances at one another. You could practically see the cartoon hearts popping like bubbles between them. The very fact that-in the semi-darkness of theatres and cinemas-we could once only snatch queer joy, makes it all the more vital that couples like them can now step into the sunlight and continue their canoodling. Many of the composers featured tonight never got that chance for visibility. Contextualising their work within the raucous joy of Pride is long overdue.
Add Classical Pride to your weekend plans-it’s rare beauty and floating swan feathers are not to be missed. And if you need more convincing, they’re raising money for Rainbow Railroad, Terrence Higgins Trust, and GAY TIMES’ Amplifund. So you’re basically doing good as you blubber, I rest my case!
Sadly the events are now folded away BUT grab you tickets for next year, click HERE!