17 Ways to Stay Entertained During Lockdown
Although you may not be able to go to concerts or rehearsals at the moment, there are still loads of ways you can enjoy classical music and the arts during lockdown. Here are 16 of my ideas and I would love to hear your suggestions @alterclassical. For further updates from us, make sure to sign up for our mailing list.
Classical music can be surprising, exhilarating, dramatic, quirky, funny, captivating and comforting, sometimes all at the same time. Musicians, actors, comedians and podcasters from around the world are here to give you their personal recommendations. Sign up to receive a new video every Thursday,
Take a spin on Concert Roulette, our classical jukebox. It’s a great way to sneak into concert halls and gig venues around the world, and stumble upon your new favourite artist, composer or piece. You can skip pieces by pressing ‘another’ until you find one you’re in the mood for.
Or…
Play Opera Roulette
…if you prefer, take a spin on Opera Roulette! It’s a free and fun way to watch opera scenes from your sofa. You might catch a well-known classic performed in a grand opera house, or perhaps a pop-up performance in a shopping centre. See what you can find!
Get stuck into a new book
We’ve got two articles with book recommendations: one about novels with a classical music theme and the other about non-fiction books detailing the alternative classical scene around the world, and discussing innovation within the classical music industry in more detail. This would also be a good time to get your hands on a copy of Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day, in which Clemency Burton-Hill chooses one piece of music for each day of the year, with a short explanation about the composer to put it into context.
Host a lockdown listening party
The musical version of a book club. Invite a few friends to bring a track they’re listening to at the moment and share something about it. Everyone listens, then you have a chat afterwards. Or you can take the Desert Island Discs Challenge: share the eight tracks you’d take to a desert island, along with one book and a luxury item. Speaking of Desert Island Discs, there are thousands of past episodes to dig into.
This memo is aimed at everyone - it’s always good to do some yoga! But more specifcially if you’re a musician, there are yoga videos and classes made especially for you, to help with posture, muscular control, self-doubt, stress management and so on. Here is our Yoga for Classical Musicians article with all the relevant links. Namaste 🙏🏻
Get to know a whole range of composers, conductors and performers in these 10 music documentaries, all of which are on YouTube, Netflix or free on Amazon Prime. Musicians include pianist Martha Argerich, violinist Itzhak Perlman and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Pictured is Written by Mrs Bach, which suggests that Bach’s Cello Suites were composed by his second wife, Anna Magdalena.
Beat Beethoven
Mix up your workout routine by running 5km in the time it takes to listen to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony (da-da-da-DUM). Pick your recording carefully as they’re all different lengths… 31 minutes for the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique recording, just over 30 minutes for the Philharmonia one and around 29 minutes for the London Symphony Orchestra. The Vienna Philharmonic goes slightly slower at 33 minutes and the New York Philharmonic version is more like 36 minutes.
Now is the perfect time to catch up on all those TV series and films you’ve been meaning to watch. We’ve searched high and low on Netflix and Amazon Prime to find 10 movies and TV series linked in some way with classical music and choirs, including Mozart in the Jungle, The Pianist and Unorthodox. Here’s to working on that dent in your sofa…
Take virtual music lessons
Always wanted to learn a musical instrument? As well as being fun, it’s a great way of supporting musicians in lockdown. You can find a teacher on Music Teachers UK. If you’re thinking kindly upon your neighbours and housemates, you can do online listening classes instead: musician and broadcaster Sandy Burnett runs weekly classes on a Morning morning looking at a great piece of classical music in each, with insights, context and a Q&A.
If you’re missing your regular rehearsals, fear not because there are heaps of virtual choirs and orchestras springing up all over the internet. It’s not quite the same but it’s something, and good to stay musically active. To take part, all you need is a phone/computer and pair of headphones. Sing/play as if no-one is listening because they won’t be!
Watch live streamed concerts
There are musicians all over the world filming themselves during lockdown. Get some live culture at home while supporting artists in doing what they do best. Here are our recommendations and you can also find a whole host of gigs (mainly non-classical) on GigsGuide. Another digital hub is the Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall, which has live broadcasts, archive concerts, interviews and concert introductions.
The Open University has free virtual courses available on music recording, theory, analysis, research, reception and more. The OpenLearn modules take between 6 hours and 20 hours and are available to access by anyone.
There are armfuls of classical music podcasts out there, lots from pre-Corona times but also quite a few that have come out of lockdown. Make your way through the British pods we’ve recommended (and check out the ones at the bottom, too, which have nothing to do with classical music). Happy listening!
Play musical bingo or host a music quiz
The UK has been going wild for virtual pub quizzes during lockdown. Has anyone tried a music-themed quiz? Or musical bingo? This could work well for choirs and orchestras that can’t rehearse together at the moment but would still like to socialise.
It’s always a pleasure to listen to other people’s playlists so we’ve collated some made by London-based arts organisations including the Barbican, the Southbank Centre and English National Opera. We also have two playlists we update regularly: our Spotify Mixtape and our COVID-19th century music playlist with 10 tracks written in the 19th century. Click the ‘follow’ button to hear a whole new set of pieces every few weeks.
Listen to an album in the dark or on your daily walk
Listen to a full symphony, concerto or album while on your daily walk to change the soundtrack of the local streets you probably know very well now. Or, for the atmospheric experience, dim the lights at home, light a candle, sink into the bath/sofa with a drink and press play. Voilà!
Hannah Fiddy is a creative entrepreneur, developing new audiences for classical music. She has created and promoted numerous concerts outside of traditional spaces, including warehouses, pubs, clubs, museums, hospitals, prisons and even in Primark. Hannah is also an interviewer, writer and guest lecturer, and runs the Avon Chamber Choir in Bristol. In a past life she founded London Flashmob, producing quirky events from wedding proposals to cultural pranks for up to 1,000 people.
Follow Hannah on Twitter @Hannah_Fiddy.