St Mary-le-Strand is a London church reborn. Anchored at the Aldwych amid a sea of traffic fumes and cut off on all sides by tides of cars, lorries and buses, it was almost inaccessible. Now imaginative town planning has replaced the roads with a wide piazza, freeing not just the church but also King’s College London and sumptuous Somerset House. Peace has descended. It’s the best thing that’s happened in the area for years.
Today you can step straight into James Gibbs’s 18th-century Italianate creation. Even in those days, it was beset by rumbling wagons and carriages, so Gibbs eschewed ground-floor nave windows to keep the congregation’s attention inside the building, thereby also creating a near-perfect space for music, a quality now recognised by pianist Warren Mailley-Smith. He has curated the new Strand international piano series that stretches into the summer, featuring some big names including Daniel Grimwood, Daniel Tong and John Lenehan. Mailley-Smith even bought the piano, a new Steinway model B.
