Royal Festival Hall

Completed 1951 Building took 20 months Size 3,000 seats 10,000 performers have played there

By contrast the opening concert on 3 May, 1951, was an all-British affair, including works by Elgar, Purcell, Arne and Vaughan Williams.

The orchestra was conducted by Sir Adrian Boult and Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Monument

The Royal Festival Hall was the first major building completed in Britain after World War II.

It is the only lasting monument to the 1951 Festival of Britain and was the first post-war British building to be listed for preservation.

The construction was completed in 20 months - despite great shortages of building materials - and cost �2m.

The hall is part of the South Bank arts complex

Under the foundation stone, laid in 1949 by then Prime Minister Clement Attlee, are buried contemporary coins, a copy of the day's Times, and the full score of Benjamin Britten's music for the wedding of Lord and Lady Harewood.

The 2001 celebrations continue on Friday when Elvis Costello, Nick Cave and David Thomas play live in Total Meltdown, a celebration of the hall's Meltdown series, one of Britain's foremost contemporary music events.

Maxwell Davies visited Antarctica for inspiration

Composer Peter Maxwell Davies will conduct the premiere of his new Antarctica Symphony on Sunday.

He has said that the symphony, his eighth, will be his last.

It was commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra as a sequel to Ralph Vaughan Williams' Sinfonia Antarctica.

Last symphony

Maxwell Davies actually travelled to Antarctica as a guest of the British Antarctic Survey to research the work.

The link with Ralph Vaughan Williams also represents a link to the Festival Hall's first concert, which also featured the composer's work.

The building's birthday celebrations also include huge photographs of the building then and now, a list of the 10,000 performers who have played at the hall, and an exhibition of the experience of attending an arts event.

This year will also see a major fund-raising campaign and work on the entrances, public spaces and acoustics of the hall.