The Kings Place concert venue is acoustically the best new small-scale hall in London; and the first sounds ever heard there, when it opened back in 2008, came from a solo cello playing Bach as part of an acoustic test.
According to the venue’s founder, Peter Millican, that cello test was proof he’d got things right: the sound was perfect. So it was predictable that the hall’s maverick programming policy, which focuses on year-long themes bearing the title “Unwrapped”, would eventually result in Cello Unwrapped: a vast undertaking that offers no fewer than 43 cellists in 49 concerts, masterclasses and related events throughout 2017, and surveys (exhaustively) the history of cello repertoire – from the instrument’s early days as bass-line support for other performers to its establishment as a star turn in its own right.
