Seventeen years after the concept of a new stand-alone building for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama was first mooted, the school officially opened its new Milton Court complex last night. The Right Hon the Lord Mayor Alderman Roger Gifford unveiled a plaque at the end of a celebratory concert, hailing the City of London as ‘the only financial centre which can now boast world-class arts and entertainment.’ Guildhall School principal Barry Ife cited the project as ‘a shining example of the triple helix of government, business and academia.’

Milton Court, designed by David Walker Architects, provides the Guildhall School with three additional auditoria including a 608-seat concert hall, a 223-seat proscenium theatre and a flexible studio space as well as numerous sprung-floor and technology-strewn teaching and rehearsal rooms, a TV studio and a costume workshop. Soaring skywards above those facilities is a residential tower owned by Heron International, who with the City of London Corporation formed Milton Court’s principal funders.

The new facilities make what was the spatially and architecturally compromised Guildhall School into the best equipped conservatoire in the UK by some margin (unless you happen to be an organist). There was a joyous mood at the celebrations last night in which students, City Aldermen and figures from the academic and corporate worlds drank champagne together in Milton Court’s luxurious, intimate and deep-carpeted foyers.

Edward Gardner conducted the Guildhall School Symphony Orchestra in the Concert Hall and while Classical works by Haydn and Mozart sat naturally (if a little un-clearly from my seat) in the slightly resonating acoustic, a big-boned performance of Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture proved that the room and its unusually high ceiling can handle large orchestral soundscapes pretty well. The concert hall might not be beautiful – it has the rather functional feel of a broadcasting hall to it and an odd cocktail of colours – but the adjoining theatre certainly is. This petite, rotund auditorium will be used for both opera and theatrical productions and has, according to technical theatre student Sebastian Matthews, ‘every conceivable technology including a fully automated flying system.’ The prospect of watching the Guildhall School’s ever-innovative opera school mount productions in here is nothing short of tantalising.

The Guildhall School is up front about its aims ‘to attract and support both the top teachers and most talented students from around the globe’. With an unusually well-endowed group of close stakeholders such as Heron and the City of London Corporation, the School may well arouse jealousy among the other conservatoires in the UK who rely on traditional funding models and don’t have the world’s financial capital on their doorstep. Following last night’s concert the Guildhall School conferred Honorary Fellowships upon The Hon David McAlpine (boss of the construction firm Sir Robert McAlpine that built the complex) and Gerald Ronson CBE (of developer Heron International). It felt slightly odd to see captains of industry honoured by a conservatoire with an orchestra seated behind them. But it’s also odd, and unprecedented, that Guildhall students now have such impressive facilities to train with – facilities which will offer a rich programme of performance to the public and which are, according to the School’s Chairman Alderman David Graves, ‘for the benefit of all.’ 

Andrew Mellor