Music while you cruise
Queen Anne Norwegian Cruise May 10-18, 2025
The editors of the Edinburgh Music Review were cruising the Norwegian fjords last week on Cunard’s latest liner, the Queen Anne. Having cruised on all the other Cunard ships over the years its internal design was familiar to me but it is very much a cruiser rather than on ocean liner like the Queen Mary 2 which we spent a month on last year. Indeed I spoke off the record to a member of the ship’s crew who confirmed that it wasn’t as stable as the QM2 in a gale. Fortunately, we were blessed with good weather for our cruise up the Norwegian coast and our enjoyment of the splendid food and drink on board was not affected by the weather.
Part of the Cunard experience is providing entertainment on board, including theatre, cinema, quizzes, and music, so we decided to review the music on board and we let the performers know that they were being reviewed by the Edinburgh Music Review and they were all pleased to get some recognition. I must say I was somewhat disappointed that there wasn’t more classical music on board, in the past we’ve had very good young string quartets, singers, guitarists etc on board. On Queen Anne there was more meagre fare, maybe reflecting that it was only a one week cruise. The standout star of the cruise for me was Nicola Loud, the violinist who first came to my attention and the world’s when she won the Young Musician of the Year competition in 1990. Nicola has of course had a fine international career with orchestras round the world so it was a great pleasure to see her headlining the Royal Court Theatre on our second night on board. Nicola was backed by the brass and percussion section of the Royal Court Orchestra. Of course the cruising audience on the Queen Anne is not a conventional classical music audience but Nicola acknowledged this by playing across a wide range of music in her concert, from folk to country, to pop and jazz, as well as the classical repertoire, such as clips from Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’. But whatever Nicola played she did it with great verve and joy; she enthused the audience and got a great reception from the very full Royal Court audience. Sadly, she only did one show.
Other performers worthy of note were folk musicians Aileen and Sticks from County Clare in Ireland. Aileen has a very nice voice and a good personality and engaged the audience at a number of the smaller venues such as the Golden Lion pub and the Commodore Club. She chose a good range of traditional and popular folk music and was well supported by Sticks on percussion. There was a good smaller jazz ensemble formed from musicians in the Royal Court Band and they gave some cool jazz performances around the ship. There was a main orchestra who were the driving musical powers behind the dance shows in the Royal Court Theatre, named ‘Let’s Dance’ and ‘Imagination’, shows which showed off the dance skills and choreography of the young dancers on stage. There were a couple of other musicians, Radio Duo from Brazil, who had a very good pianist Fabriano who played cool jazz and accompanied his partner. There was also a young female saxophonist who inspired some children to dance and I did even briefly guest on the piano myself, but since it was a pianola I can’t quite claim I made the music!
Hugh on the pianola!
