The whole point of the orchestra's deciding to cancel the tour was not that they needed visas, or even the processes needed for them to obtain them. It all boiled down to the cost of transporting all the people down to London at the same time, the high probability that the process would take more than one day thus requiring overnight accomdation (a highly expensive thing in London). The orchestra offered to pay for the embassy officials to travel to Manchester and to do the interviews there. The embassy rejected this outright - this is what all the fuss really is about.