Now, the expression “town hall” in English normally means the headquarters of the administration of the town – a building with offices where people work, in other words. But not in Birmingham. Our Town Hall is a public hall. It was built as a place for concerts, public lectures and political meetings.

　　The group of citizens planning the Town Hall first collected together the money they needed; then they employed an architect and builders.The architect designed the Town Hall to look like a Roman temple – look at the picture on the website, or on your iPod screen, and you will see what I mean. The builders brought stone for the building by ship and canal boat all the way from Anglesey, in north Wales. Inside, skilled craftsmen built an organ – one of the largest organs in Britain at the time. And in 1834 the new Town Hall opened with a music festival to help raise money for a local hospital.

　　Over the years since then, Birmingham Town Hall has seen all sorts of events and performance. The first performance of Mendelssohn’s great oratorio Elijah took place in the Town Hall in 1846, and in the following year Mendelssohn himself played the organ at a concert. Several of the works of the English composer Edward Elgar were also given first performances in the Town Hall. Charles Dickens read from his book “A Christmas Carol”, and the Town Hall has seen countless public and political meetings. It was the home for Birmingham’s orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones performed there, as did countless other classical, jazz and pop musicians.

　　But then things started to go wrong. The building began to deteriorate. Atmospheric pollution attacked the stonework, and water came through the roof. Moreover, the facilities at the Town Hall were no longer what modern audiences expect. A spendid new concert hall, Symphony Hall, opened in Birmingham in the early 1990s, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra moved there from the old Town Hall. In 1996, the city council decided that the Town Hall was no longer safe, and it closed. Many people feared that it would never re-open.

　　The Town Hall stood empty and silent for the next nine years. Finally, the city council managed to find enough money – with help from the National Lottery and the European Union – to repair and restore the building. Workmen covered the Town Hall in scaffolding and polythene sheeting, and the work of restoration started. And now it is finished, and the Town Hall will re-open today, 4 October, with a gala concert. I think that Mendelssohn and Elgar would be pleased. To celebrate the occasion, here is a short extract from Max Reger’s Toccata and Fugue in D, Opus 59 No 5, and it is played by Michael Austin on the magnificent organ of Birmingham Town Hall.