Conservatory of Music · Est. 1902
Metronome
Every discipline here begins the same way — with time. Strings, winds, brass, percussion and voice, all kept honest by a single beat. Set it, and the whole building keeps step.
Set the tempo
Largo 40 · Andante 92 · Allegro 132 · Presto 184
Reduced-motion visitors see the arm frozen on a downbeat — the tempo still reads, it just doesn't swing.
Five disciplines, one pulse
Programs
The conservatory teaches five families of instrument. Watch them: on every beat, one section takes its turn — the same way an ensemble enters, part by part, until the whole is playing together.
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01
Strings
The long line. Students learn to shape a phrase before they learn to end it — bowing, vibrato and the discipline of playing quietly in a room built to carry sound.
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02
Winds
Breath, made into pitch. The wind studio drills air and reed until a held note stops wavering and simply stands there, patient, in the middle of the hall.
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03
Brass
Weight and blaze. Brass players study restraint first — the hardest fortissimo is the one that arrives exactly on the beat and not a hair before.
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04
Percussion
Keepers of time itself. Here the metronome is not a tutor but a colleague — percussionists learn that silence is measured just as carefully as the strike.
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05
Voice
The first instrument, and the oldest. Singers train breath, diction and nerve — and the rare art of stretching a beat without ever losing it.
This evening's programme
Faculty
We list our teachers the way we list a recital — as a programme. Each entry is a lifetime of one instrument, offered to the next room of students.
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Chair of Strings
Ildikó Varga
Thirty years first violin before she turned to teaching. Insists a scale is a piece of music, and grades it as one.
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Principal Oboe · Winds
Rafael Moretti
Carves his own reeds and expects his students to as well. Believes intonation is a moral question.
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Solo Horn · Brass
Adaeze Okafor
Played twenty seasons in the pit. Teaches entrances — the terror of them, and the joy of landing one clean.
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Head of Percussion
Jonas Halvorsen
Can hear a rushed sixteenth from the back of the balcony. Keeps a wall of forty metronomes, none of them digital.
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Master of Voice · Opera
Mireille Chastain
A soprano of the old school. Teaches that the loudest thing in any hall is a silence held one beat too long.
The instrument you cannot carry
The Hall
Redoute Hall was drawn as one enormous instrument — a shoebox of plaster and oak tuned for the human voice and the unamplified orchestra. Every surface has a job.
- Reverberation
- 1.9 s at mid frequency
- Seats
- 844, in stalls and one balcony
- Shape
- Classical shoebox, oak-lined
- Stage
- Raised, with a reflecting canopy
Entry, Autumn 2026
Auditions
One intake a year. We hear everyone in person, in the hall, unamplified. The calendar below moves in four measures.
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15 January
Application opens
A single form, a short letter of intent, and the name of your principal study.
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1 March
Repertoire submitted
Two contrasting works and one study. Recordings are read, not required.
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6–17 April
Live audition
Fifteen minutes on the platform of Redoute Hall, before a panel of three.
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9 May
Offers made
Decisions by post and by call. Enrolment closes the following month.
Come and listen
Visit
The hall is open for public rehearsals most Thursdays. Come early; we start on the beat.
Metronome Conservatory14 Cadence Row
Old Quarter · Est. 1902
- Office
- Mon–Fri, 9–17
- Open rehearsal
- Thursdays, 19:30
- Box office
- +00 20 7946 0102