Stories of a City: Making sweet music at Cambridge’s West Road Concert Hall

Cambridge novelist Susan Grossey takes us to a different city site each month and tells us their stories – past, present and personal. This month, we’re off to West Road Concert Hall. . .

When I was 12, my piano teacher threw up her elegant hands in surrender. She followed two earlier piano teachers and a flute maestro, none of whom could coax music from me. My father comforted me: “You are obviously a true Grossey, and we Grosseys have always provided that essential element of any musical event: the appreciative audience.” And so it continues: I remain an avid consumer of other people’s musical talent whilst having absolutely none of my own.

One of the greatest joys for me of living in Cambridge is my ready access to all manner of free music. It’s not that I’m cheap: if I know the music in question and love it, I will happily pay to listen. But the bliss of free events is that you can sample all manner of stuff that is new to you without bankrupting yourself. You may unearth a new entry for your “Desert Island Discs” list or you may be thankful that you never have to hear it again – either way, it’s an experience.

And if you have yet to discover the Cambridge Concert Calendar, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It comes out in paper form every quarter (you can get a postal subscription) or it is available online all the time, for free. And it lists musical events in Cambridge and nearby places like Saffron Walden – including concerts at colleges, churches and (the gold standard for me) the West Road Concert Hall. I haven’t done a proper reckoning, but I estimate that about half of the listings are for free concerts – with at least one a day in Cambridge during the university term. Many are at lunchtime, offering the most perfect interlude in the working day – a time to quieten your busy mind and top up your cultural fuel tank.

The ones I rarely miss are, as I mentioned, at the West Road Concert Hall. During term they run a series of Cambridge University Lunchtime Concerts on Tuesdays, and here you can hear some of the rising stars of the university music scene. As I write, they are offering a concert by students with chamber music awards, another by those competing to join an orchestra, and an ever-popular outing by the university’s brass band. And again, it’s all free. They do stand at the door with a collection basket at the end, but there is no pressure at all to contribute.

From the outside, West Road Concert Hall is no beauty – I much prefer the elegant brick building next to it, which seems to house offices and practice rooms for musical types. But I find the inside of the concert hall very calming, with its pale wood floors and walls, the neat rows of mid-blue fold-down seats and the absolutely vast blue curtains. (I once took an elderly female relative to a concert, and she observed that unhooking and then rehanging the curtains for cleaning would be a nightmare. As we all do that regularly with our own curtains. Yes. Of course.)

The hall has the feel of a cocoon for me: no matter how busy I am or how full my mind is of jobs to be done and things to remember, it all floats away as soon as I sit down. I like a central seat quite near the front, so that I can see the facial expressions and finger-work on bows and strings and keys – unless it’s a piano concert, when I prefer to sit as high up as possible on the side overlooking the keyboard. It’s never too late to pick up some tips, in case I decide to take up the piano again myself. And what you are hearing now is the collective stampede of all the piano teachers in Cambridge, leaving the county.

Susan Grossey is the author of many historical crime novels, including the Hardiman books, set in Cambridge in the 1820s. The second in this series – Sizar – was published in December 2024. See susangrossey.com

Illustration by Lucy Jones of Poppet Pics. For more about Lucy and her work, follow @lucyjonespoppetpics on Instagram.