Frugal London music: And, it’s mostly in Wren churches

Violinist Marta Kowalczyk was rehearsing a Prokofiev piece when I ventured into St. James Piccadilly, a central London church designed in the 17th century by Sir Christopher Wren.

The music wasn’t a surprise. Visitors to London happen on free music all the time. Just that day, I’d heard a fiddler playing Irish reels in an Underground corridor, a Hari Krishna troupe chanting with drum and finder cymbals beneath a railway bridge, and a Salvation Army brass ensemble playing marches in front of a department store on Regent Street.

What I’d walked in on at St. James Piccadilly was free but hardly casual. Turns out that lunch time is music time in churches across the city. There is a free – donations accepted – lunch-time recital at one church or another every day of the week, all year long.

Violinists like Kowalczyk – a medalist in international competition from Poland now studying at London’s Royal Academy of Music – are typical. You’re just as likely to hear a vocalist, a chamber music ensemble or an organist. Classical music is the norm. Kowalczyk and accompanying pianist Somi Kim, for example, performed five “lyric miniatures” by Prokofiev, as well as sonatas by Schubert and Beethoven.

But first, they had to run off the homeless men sleeping in the pews.

St. James Piccadilly, said to be Wren’s favorite, gives over a third of its pews every day as a dormitory of sorts to homeless men. It’s an aspect of the church’s ministry, a sign on a wall explains.

Their presence, however, “wouldn’t be very appropriate” for the lunch-time concerts, an organizer told me, so they’re roused at 11:30. “But they’ll be back at 2.”

Most of the lunch-time recitals are in Wren churches. By my count, six Wren churches – all but St. James Piccadilly are located the City of London, which today is London’s financial district – offer lunch-time music.

Alas, none of the lunch-time recitals is in Wren’s best-known, most-visited church, St. Paul’s Cathedral. And visiting St. Paul’s is not on anyone’s frugal-London itinerary: Admission is $28.

Yet, frugal travelers to London know how to visit St. Paul’s and hear great music – for free.
Come at 5 p.m. after the cathedral is closed to visitors. Enter at the side entrance reserved for parishioners. You’re there for the Evensong service: chorale music and Wren’s architectural masterpiece – for free.

Another Wren-music opportunity is available on Sunday mornings. It’s the 11 a.m. service in The Wren Chapel of the Royal Hospital along the north bank of the Thames in Chelsea. This is a choral matins, where a 12-member choir leads most of the service. These are among the finest choral musicians in London, critics write.

If you arrive early, you’re likely to by met by an Irish-born,  retired Army sergeant named Paddy. Slowed a bit by cancer, Paddy earlier was The Chapel’s chief tour guide. Paddy showed me the choir space carved by Grinling Gibbons, the finest carver of his day.

Gibbons signed his work with a pea pod, Paddy said.

“If open, the work was paid on time,” Paddy said. “If closed, not.”

This one is open.

Paddy also told me the tale of the Sebastiano Ricci mural across the chapel’s front wall. It was commissioned by Queen Anne in remembrance of the 17 child she birthed and lost. They’re depicted in the mural as angels in heaven.

As time for the service neared, Paddy seated me to the right and across the aisle from the soprano whose voice he described as “of the angels.” It was.