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34-691: The quartet was formed while its members were studying at the Royal College of Music in London. Whilst there, they were coached by the Chilingirian Quartet . They subsequently studied with the Alban Berg Quartet at Cologne. The quartet was one of the first groups to participate in the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme , from 1999 to 2001. They made their Carnegie Hall debut in 2000 as part of

68-613: A new building was commissioned in the early 1890s on a new site in Prince Consort Road , South Kensington . The building was designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield in Flemish Mannerist style in red brick dressed with buff-coloured Welden stone. Construction began in 1892 and the building opened in May 1894. The building was largely paid for by two large donations from Samson Fox , a Yorkshire industrialist, whose statue, along with that of

102-563: A wide variety of concert venues including the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, a 468-seat barrel-vaulted concert hall designed by Blomfield, built in 1901 and extensively restored in 2008–09. The Britten Theatre seats 400, and was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1986 and is used for opera, ballet, music and theatre. There is also a 150-seat recital hall dating from 1965, as well as several smaller recital rooms, including three organ-equipped Parry Rooms. A £40 million development

136-586: Is James Williams, whose tenure began in September 2024. The College's teaching professoriate numbers over 200 musicians, including internationally known figures like Dmitri Alexeev , Martyn Brabbins , Natalie Clein , Danny Driver , Martin Gatt , Chen Jiafeng , Jakob Lindberg , Mike Lovatt , Patricia Rozario , Brindley Sherratt, Ashley Solomon , Mark-Anthony Turnage , Maxim Vengerov , Roger Vignoles , Raphael Wallfisch and Errollyn Wallen as well as principals of

170-624: Is one of the four conservatories of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and a member of Conservatoires UK . Its buildings are directly opposite the Royal Albert Hall on Prince Consort Road , next to Imperial College and among the museums and cultural centres of Albertopolis . The Royal College of Music was founded in 1883 to replace the short-lived and unsuccessful National Training School of Music (NTSM). The idea for

204-619: Is the nickname given to the area centred on Exhibition Road in London , named after Prince Albert , consort of Queen Victoria . It contains many educational and cultural sites. It lies in the former village of Brompton in Middlesex , renamed as South Kensington , split between the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the City of Westminster (the border running along Imperial College Road ), and

238-745: The Vienna Konzerthaus . In May 2011, they curated their own 'Beethoven & Schubert: Final Years’ project with concerts in Aldeburgh, the Gulbenkian Grand Auditorium and Philharmonie Luxembourg, collaborating with Imogen Cooper , Ian Bostridge , Mark Padmore , Julius Drake and Valentin Erben. Towards the end of 2011, the Belcea Quartet embarked on an ambitious survey of the complete string quartets by Beethoven with cycles of concerts planned in

272-745: The 'Distinctive Debuts' series. Their first performance at the Edinburgh International Festival was in August 2001. The Belcea Quartet were quartet in-residence at Wigmore Hall in London from 2001 to 2006. During their Wigmore residency, the quartet participated in the first performances of The Canticle of the Rose by Joseph Phibbs . In the 2010/11 season, the Belcea Quartet gave the world premiere of Mark Anthony Turnage 's new work for string quartet Twisted Blues with Twisted Ballad at Wigmore Hall , Cologne Philharmonie , Amsterdam Concertgebouw and

306-512: The 1950s rear extension to the Science Museum are all aligned on this axis, which cannot be seen on the ground. This regular geometric alignment of Albertopolis can be observed readily only from the balconies of the Queen's Tower (very rarely open to visitors), although the northern part can be glimpsed from the top floor of the Science Museum. The closest tube station is South Kensington , linked to

340-757: The 19th and 20th centuries. Students in the time of Stanford and Parry included Samuel Coleridge-Taylor , Gustav Holst , Ralph Vaughan Williams and John Ireland . Later alumni include Louise Alder , Sir Thomas Allen , Stanley Bate , Benjamin Britten , Dame Sarah Connolly , Colin Davis , Sir James Galway , Peggy Glanville-Hicks , Gwyneth Jones , Rowland Lee , Neville Marriner , Anna Meredith , Hugh McLean , Tarik O'Regan , Gervase de Peyer , Trevor Pinnock , Anna Russell , Dame Joan Sutherland , Mark-Anthony Turnage , Andrew Lloyd Webber , Julian Lloyd Webber , James Horner , Sir Reginald Thatcher , Michael Tippett and

374-529: The NTSM was initially proposed by the Prince Consort decades before the school opened. Conservatoires to train young students for a musical career had been set up in major European cities, but in London the long-established Royal Academy of Music had not supplied suitable training for professional musicians: in 1870 it was estimated that fewer than ten per cent of instrumentalists in London orchestras had studied at

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408-582: The Prince of Wales, stands in the entrance hall. Grove retired at the end of 1894 and was succeeded as director by Hubert Parry. Parry died in 1918 and was succeeded as director by Sir Hugh Allen (1919–37), Sir George Dyson (1938–52), Sir Ernest Bullock (1953–59), Sir Keith Falkner (1960–74), Sir David Willcocks (1974–84), Michael Gough Matthews (1985–93), Dame Janet Ritterman (1993–2005) and Professor Colin Lawson (2005-2024). The College's current Director

442-623: The Quartet was awarded the title Chamber Music Ensemble of the Year by Germany's Echo Klassik Awards and nominated for a 2008 Gramophone Award. Their release of a double disc of the late Schubert Quartets and the String Quintet with Valentin Erben for EMI , was nominated for a Gramophone Award. The Belcea Quartet are Quartet in Residence Guildhall School of Music and Drama , London, and, from

476-726: The Royal College of Music’s hall of residence, Prince Consort Village, provides accommodation for more than 400 students and with acoustically treated bedrooms and dedicated practise rooms. The college is a registered charity under English law. The college teaches all aspects of Western classical music from undergraduate to doctoral level. There is a junior department, where 300 children aged 8 to 18 are educated on Saturdays. Since August 2011, RCM has been collaborating with Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts , Singapore, and now offers both undergraduate and taught postgraduate degree programmes, jointly conferred by both institutions. The RCM has

510-634: The UK, Germany, Austria, Sweden and the USA. The Belcea Quartet won the Gramophone Award for best debut recording in 2001. Their discography for EMI includes Fauré's La Bonne Chanson with Ian Bostridge; Schubert's Trout Quintet with Thomas Adès and Corin Long; a double disc of Britten's string quartets, which won a MIDEM Cannes Award; Mozart's "Dissonance" and "Hoffmeister" quartets; and the complete Bartók quartets, for which

544-514: The academy. The NTSM opened in 1876, with Arthur Sullivan as its principal. Under Sullivan, a reluctant and ineffectual principal, the NTSM failed to provide a satisfactory alternative to the Royal Academy and, by 1880, a committee of examiners comprising Charles Hallé , Sir Julius Benedict , Sir Michael Costa , Henry Leslie and Otto Goldschmidt reported that the school lacked "executive cohesion". The following year Sullivan resigned and

578-589: The area bordered by Cromwell Road to the south and Kensington Road to the north. Institutions in and around Albertopolis include: The following were originally institutions in their own right: Institutions formerly in Albertopolis include: More recent additions to Albertopolis include: Following the advice of Prince Albert the area was purchased by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 with

612-606: The beginning of the 2010/11 season, Ensemble in Residence at the Vienna Konzerthaus . Partial list of recordings: Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music ( RCM ) is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington , London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including performance, composition, conducting, music theory and history, and has trained some of

646-709: The buildings threatened was the Imperial Institute , designed by T. E. Collcutt . There is a central axis between the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens to the north and the central portal of the south façade of the Natural History Museum. The Royal Albert Hall, Royal College of Music, the former tower of the otherwise-demolished Imperial Institute (now the Queen's Tower of Imperial College London) and

680-483: The college orchestra, including fee-paying instrumental students, was 33 violins, five violas , six cellos , one double bass , one flute , one oboe and two horns . Grove appointed 12 professors of orchestral instruments, in addition to distinguished teachers in other musical disciplines including Jenny Lind (singing), Hubert Parry (composition), Ernst Pauer (piano), Arabella Goddard (piano) and Walter Parratt (organ). The old premises proved restrictive and

714-514: The guitarist John Williams . Awards include ARCM (Associate), LRCM (Licentiate) and FRCM (Fellow). Each year the Royal College of Music bestows a number of honorary degrees, memberships and fellowships on individuals who have made an exceptional contribution to life at the RCM and the wider musical community. Albertopolis 51°29′53″N 0°10′36″W  /  51.49806°N 0.17667°W  / 51.49806; -0.17667 Albertopolis

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748-566: The major London orchestras including the London Symphony , BBC Symphony , London Philharmonic and the Philharmonia . Since its founding in 1882, the college has been linked with the British royal family and its Patron is His Majesty King Charles III. For 40 years Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother was president; in 1993 Charles III (then Prince of Wales) became president. Opened in 2016,

782-486: The most important figures in international music life. The RCM also conducts research in performance practice and performance science . The RCM has over 900 students from more than 50 countries, with professors who include many who are musicians with worldwide reputations. It is currently ranked as the worldwide number-one university for performing arts by the QS World University Rankings . The college

816-429: The most substantial archive of images of musicians in the UK. The RCM's 600,000 concert programmes document concert life from 1730 to the present day. There are also more than 800 musical instruments and accessories from circa 1480 to the present. Since opening in 1882, the college has had a distinguished list of teachers and alumni, including most of the composers who brought about the " English Musical Renaissance " of

850-722: The museum is a clavicytherium , thought to be the world's oldest surviving keyboard instrument , and the earliest known guitar. Following a £3.6million investment from Heritage Lottery Fund , the Museum underwent a major redevelopment in 2020–21. Owing partly to the vision of its founders, particularly Grove, the RCM now holds significant Collection Materials, dating from the fifteenth century onwards. These include autograph manuscripts such as Anne Boleyn 's Music Book, Chopin 's Minute Waltz , Elgar 's Cello Concerto , Haydn 's String Quartet No. 48 Op. 64/1 and Mozart 's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor K491 . More extensive collections feature

884-670: The museums by the South Kensington Subway . On 4 May 1885, the District Railway opened South Kensington Subway , a pedestrian subway (a tiled tunnel), running from the station beneath the length of Exhibition Road, giving sheltered access to the newly built museums for a toll of 1 penny . The subway was originally intended to go as far as the Royal Albert Hall, but the construction of the Imperial Institute meant

918-513: The music of Herbert Howells and Frank Bridge and film scores by Stanley Myers . Among more than 300 original portraits are John Cawse 's 1826 painting of Weber (the last of the composer), Haydn by Thomas Hardy (1791) and Bartolommeo Nazari 's painting of Farinelli at the height of his fame. A recent addition to the collection is a portrait of the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke by Reginald Gray . 10,000 prints and photographs constitute

952-522: The new institution should succeed as a training ground for orchestral players, Grove had two principal allies: the violinist Henry Holmes and the composer and conductor Charles Villiers Stanford . They believed that a capable college orchestra would not only benefit instrumental students, but would give students of composition the essential chance to experience the sound of their music. The college's first intake of scholarship students included 28 who studied an orchestral instrument. The potential strength of

986-771: The profits made from the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was held in a site in Hyde Park nearby to the north-east. This is commemorated in the name of the principal north–south street laid out on their estate, Exhibition Road. Prince Albert was a driving force behind the Great Exhibition and President of the Royal Commission, and the name "Albertopolis" seems to have been coined in the 1850s to celebrate and somewhat satirise his role in Victorian cultural life. After his death

1020-490: The term fell into disuse, and the area was more widely referred to as South Kensington . It was revived by architectural historians in the 1960s and popularised by the nascent conservation movement to bring attention to the complex of public Victorian buildings and the surrounding houses built on the Commissioners' estate, that were threatened with demolition by the expansion and redevelopment plans of Imperial College. Among

1054-520: The tunnel emerged at the Science Museum where it exits onto Exhibition Road. Although it had cost £42,614 to construct (approximately £5.81 million today), it was closed on 10 November 1886 and afterwards was opened only occasionally for special museum events. Originally only opened during exhibitions in South Kensington, it was opened to the public free of charge in 1908. The subway is Grade II listed. There are also three research libraries in

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1088-549: Was completed in 2021 and the estate’s footprint was almost doubled including the creation of two new performance spaces, the Performance Hall which seats 140 people, and the Performance Studio, an intimate venue for solo and chamber performance. The Royal College of Music Museum houses over 14,000 items, representing a range of music-making activities over a period of more than five centuries. Amongst instruments housed in

1122-477: Was drawn up for a successor body to the NTSM. The Royal College of Music occupied the premises previously home to the NTSM and opened there on 7 May 1883. Grove was appointed its first director. There were 50 scholars elected by competition and 42 fee-paying students. Grove, a close friend of Sullivan, loyally maintained that the new college was a natural evolution from the NTSM. In reality, his aims were radically different from Sullivan's. In his determination that

1156-522: Was replaced by John Stainer . The original plan was to merge the Royal Academy of Music and the National Training School of Music into a single, enhanced organisation. The NTSM agreed, but after prolonged negotiations, the Royal Academy refused to enter into the proposed scheme. In 1881, with George Grove as a leading instigator and with the support of the Prince of Wales, a draft charter

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