Now unoccupied and listed by its current owner, the English National Opera, for £ 11,000,000, Decca’s former studios at 165 Broadhurst Gardens, West Hampstead, London, was for 40 years the place where many of the last century’s finest artists made their greatest recordings. This is the back story.
Recording location: Kingsway Hall, London. For the LP or CD buyer, that information alone was a near guarantee of high fidelity. Whatever the performance, and certainly without overlooking the indispensable work and talent of the producers and engineers, the warm, rich and ample acoustics of that fabled venue represented an added value without price.
Though none were as celebrated as Kingsway Hall, Decca did use a number of other locations. In Philip Stuart’s definitive Decca Classical Discography, nearly 1,500 pages in length, there are over 800 entries for “West Hampstead Studios”, spanning the years 1938-1980.
Each of those 800 entries typically involved, at least for orchestral recordings, several sessions, while chamber music and soloists were booked for “as long as it takes”. Over a 42-year span, and counting only “standard classical music” – versus, say, other high-profile Decca artists such as the prolific Mantovani – the morning / afternoon / evening sessions must have numbered in the thousands. Thus, the West Hampstead Studios constituted a tremendous workhorse for Decca, particularly during the label’s formative years.
It has now been more than four decades since recordings were last made there, and currently the facility, now for sale, was most recently used as a rehearsal space and administrative offices by the English National Opera (ENO). Its central role in Decca’s remarkable success bears retelling – what follows is a brief backstory of the historic West Hampstead Studios.