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A CELEBRITY gala concert to raise funds for the “affordable” Conway Hall Sunday Concerts is to be held on Sunday May 9 at the hall in Red Lion Square, Holborn. The fundraiser is being held to ensure the future of the concert series following a period of financial uncertainty.

“The hall’s Sunday evening chamber music concerts at low ticket prices are one of London’s great musical institutions,” says Simon Callaghan, artistic director of the Sunday Concerts. “They date back as far as 1878 when the People’s Concert      Society was formed for the purpose of increasing the popularity of good music by means of cheap music.
 

“Since then, the concerts have played a significant part in the musical life of London, weekly performances being given with hardly a break except for a handful during the Blitz. The tradition of “cheap” music has been kept alive by the support of many fine musicians including such string quartets as the Amadeus, Allegri and Endellion and instrumentalists Myra Hess, Frank Bridge and Benno Moiseiwitch.”

Performers at the upcoming gala concert include Jack Liebeck, Eniko Magyar, Janet Hilton and Hiro Takenouchi. Timothy West and his wife Prunella Scales will be narrators in Poulenc’s Babar the Elephant and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite respectively.
 

The future of the affordable concerts became uncertain after the London Chamber Music Society (LCMS), organisers of the concerts for several years, moved its Sunday Concerts to the Kings Place arts centre in York Way, King’s Cross. For a time, audiences at the Conway Hall concerts dwindled to barely 70, hardly one-fifth of the seats.
 

More recently, audience numbers have revived to more than 200 on occasion, partly in response to the low-ticket prices.

Tickets still cost only £7 each or a bargain price of £3 for people under 18, somewhat less than LCMS online and box office ticket prices.
 

• Gala Concert:  Saturday May 9, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, WC1, 07732 040615, 6.30pm, £10