Enjoying a renaissance

When Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, turns her head to look out of the window, I wonder if she's fed up with what must be her umpteenth interview of the day. But no. She's looking lovingly at the gleaming new Royal Festival Hall, the jewel in her Southbank crown.

After two years of closure, and £115million spent on refurbishment, the venue is looking mighty chipper. It's been completely cleaned, the bars and foyers are bigger, the seats have more legroom and, most importantly, the previously terrible acoustics have been completely overhauled.

It officially reopens tonight (Monday) with a lavish gala concert, where all four resident orchestras will be on stage at the same time. That's 250 musicians, not including the choir needed for the finale of Beethoven's Symphony No.9.

'I love a challenge,' Kelly says, with a wide grin.

Over the next two weeks, there are plenty more classical treats. Tomorrow, the exciting Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra through works by Knussen and Mahler; on Wednesday the London Philharmonic Orchestra will be steered by its principal conductor designate, young Russian maestro Vladimir Jurowski, through Mozart's piano concerto No.20, Prokofiev's Symphony No.5 and work by Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke.

It's rare to find a female conductor of Marin Alsop's standard, so make sure you catch the firebrand American on June 26 and 27, where she'll be overseeing a '21st-century realisation' of Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring, complete with dancing and hi-tech visual effects.

'The heritage of this site inspires me,' says Kelly, a noted director and producer who was appointed artistic director in 2005. 'In 1951, the planners were committed to the intellectual ideals of modernism, of Bauhaus, of access to the arts. I want to see how all the art forms here - literature, dance, music, the visual arts - can talk to each other.'

But what about classical music, and the four brilliant orchestras? Will they get sidelined? 'They are absolutely central to our vision. I passionately believe classical music can have the same renaissance that the visual arts have had over the past 20 years,' says Kelly firmly.