The Wigmore Hall is a concert hall at 36 Wigmore Street, in west London. It was designed by Thomas Edward Collcutt and opened in 1901 as the Bechstein Hall; it is considered to have particularly good acoustics. It specialises in performances of chamber music, early music, vocal music and song recitals, and hosts over five hundred concerts each year, as well as a weekly concert broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
The Bechstein Hall was built between 1899 and 1901 by C. Bechstein Pianofortefabrik, the German piano manufacturer, whose showroom was next door. The British architect Thomas Edward Collcutt was commissioned to design the space. Collcutt was also responsible for the Savoy Hotel on The Strand (since modified) and the Palace Theatre on Cambridge Circus (originally the Royal English Opera House), with which the Hall shares pale terracotta ornamentation.
Bechstein Hall opened on 31 May 1901 with a concert featuring pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni and violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. [1] During its early period the Hall attracted great musicians like Artur Schnabel, Peter Arnold, Pablo Sarasate, Percy Grainger, Myra Hess, Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Rosing, Alexander Siloti, Camille Saint-Saëns, Jascha Spivakovsky, Max Reger and Marian Anderson (who performed there in 1933).
The Bechstein Company built similar concert halls in Saint Petersburg and Paris, though like its London offices and performing space, these and the business as a whole suffered during the First World War. Bechstein was forced to cease trading in Britain on 5 June 1916 after the passing of the Trading with the Enemy Amendment Act 1916 and all property, including the concert hall and the showrooms, was seized and summarily closed. [2] In 1916 the Hall was sold as enemy property at auction to Debenhams for £56,500 – a figure considerably short of the £100,000 cost of the building alone. It was then rechristened Wigmore Hall and opened under the new name in 1917.
The Wigmore Hall follows the Renaissance style, using alabaster and marble walls, which furnish a flat, rectangular hall with a small raised stage area complete with a cupola above depicting the Soul of Music. [3] The distinctive mural was designed by Gerald Moira, who was responsible for a number of contemporary public art works; he later became principal of the Edinburgh College of Art. After the completion of the design, the cupola was executed by the sculptor Frank Lynn Jenkins. It was restored in 1991 and 1992 and has often been featured in the Hall's marketing and print material.[ citation needed ]
The Hall is considered to have one of the best acoustics for classical music in Europe. [4] It was refurbished in 2004 and was widely praised for being completed on time and on budget. The Hall's current capacity, spread across the stalls and a smaller balcony, is 545 seats. [1] In 2005, the Wigmore Hall Trust purchased a long lease of 300 years for £3.1m. [5] This both secured the future of the Hall and allowed money previously required for rent to be used for further development of its artistic programme. There are two bars and a restaurant on the lower ground floor, below the main auditorium. [6]
Wigmore Hall enjoyed a number of long associations with many great artists of the 20th century including Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Victoria de los Ángeles, Sergey Prokofiev, Shura Cherkassky, Paul Hindemith, Andrés Segovia, Peter Pears, Benjamin Britten and Francis Poulenc.
The Hall maintained a particularly fruitful relationship with Benjamin Britten, both as composer and performer. His Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings , the Second String Quartet, The Holy Sonnets of John Donne and Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo were premièred at the Hall, as were extracts from the opera Peter Grimes (ahead of its world première at the Sadler's Wells Theatre in June 1945).
Wigmore Hall commemorated its association with Britten with a series of performances and events entitled 'Before Life and After' in November and December 2012. [7] Those concerts featured artists such as Alice Coote, Ann Murray, Mark Padmore, Gerald Finley, Julius Drake, Malcolm Martineau, Martyn Brabbins, Nash Ensemble and the Takács Quartet, given to mark the beginning of a year-long international celebration of the 100th anniversary of Britten's birth. [8]
Wigmore Hall's 2019–20 season featured a series focusing on Britten and his connections with the venue. Allan Clayton and James Baillieu commemorated the first performance of Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, given by Britten and his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, on 23 September 1942, alongside a lineup of additional singers in further Britten works. Later in the season, Wigmore Hall commemorated both Britten's birthday and the anniversary of his death. [9]
Since its inception, the Hall has been a major hub for Lieder and art song performance. The British première of Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin took place at Wigmore Hall in 1903 [10] as well as the first UK performance of Janáček's song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared in 1922. [11]
Peter Schreier, Janet Baker and Margaret Price performed regularly at the Hall, and in recent years Wigmore has produced recitals featuring Thomas Quasthoff, Ian Bostridge, Susan Graham, Mark Padmore, Sir Thomas Allen, Matthias Goerne, Dame Felicity Lott, Angelika Kirchschlager, Simon Keenlyside, Anne Sofie von Otter, Wolfgang Holzmair, Christopher Maltman, Andreas Scholl, and Soile Isokoski. More recent performers include Christian Gerhaher, Florian Boesch, Roderick Williams, Iestyn Davies, Sandrine Piau, Lucy Crowe and Henk Neven.
Instrumentalists and chamber groups performing at the hall include Leslie Howard, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Charlie Siem, Stephen Kovacevich, András Schiff, Joshua Bell, Maxim Vengerov, Angela Hewitt, Steven Isserlis, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Steven Osborne, Stephen Hough, Bruce Brubaker, the Nash Ensemble, the Beaux Arts and Florestan Trios and the Artemis, Aviv, Belcea, Emerson, Endellion, Hagen, Jerusalem, Takács and Zehetmair Quartets. [12] In recent years, artists and ensembles including Igor Levit, Iestyn Davies, the Doric String Quartet, The Elias String Quartet, Ning Feng, Francesco Piemontesi, Alina Ibragimova, Mahan Esfahni, Arcangelo, Hilary Hahn, Thomas Ades, Sir George Benjamin, Julia Fisher, Nicola Benedetti, Isabele Faust, Bretton Brown, and Christian Gerharher have become associated with and connected to Wigmore Hall through concert series and artistic residencies. The Hall is noted for helping young artists launch and develop their international careers.
The following chamber works had their UK premières at the Hall: Janáček's Sonata for violin and piano; Bartók's six string quartets; Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2; Debussy's Violin Sonata; Copland's Contrasts; and Richard Strauss's Sextet from Capriccio . [13]
Wigmore Hall's director is Limerick-born John Gilhooly, OBE, a classical singer. He joined as CEO in 2000 and became artistic director in addition in 2005 at the age of 32. [14] Gilhooly has maintained and expanded the Hall's core repertoire of classical song, chamber and early music, as well as introducing new initiatives to attract a more diverse audience. Gilhooly introduced jazz evenings, curated by the American jazz pianist Brad Mehldau. World music is also a regular feature and there is a series of late night concerts, which have attracted new younger listeners.
The previous artistic director was Paul Kildea. Before him, William Lyne served as director for 37 years from 1966 to 2003, during which time he introduced themed seasons, the first of which was the Fauré Series in 1979–80, with subsequent programmes dedicated to Schumann, Purcell, Bach, Ligeti, Haydn, Shostakovich and Vaughan Williams. [15]
Building on its heritage, Wigmore Hall has become a major commissioner of new music. On 31 August 2007, John Gilhooly announced a scheme for modern composers.
Wigmore fosters further links with the contemporary music scene through the introduction of its Composer-in-Residence scheme. Luke Bedford became the first Composer-in-Residence in 2009 and was succeeded by Julian Anderson in 2013. Alongside performances of their work, Wigmore has featured series of concerts dedicated to the music of Sir George Benjamin, Huw Watkins, Thomas Larcher, Elliott Carter, Brett Dean, Kevin Volans, James MacMillan and Jörg Widmann. The 2019–20 season Composer-in-Residence was Vijay Iyer.
In 2012, John Gilhooly publicised a renewed commissioning scheme, supported by a major gift from the Fondation Hoffmann and its president, the Swiss businessman, conservationist and philanthropist, André Hoffmann. The Fondation's donation has ensured the commission of new works by Julian Anderson, Peter Eötvös, Anna Meredith, Nico Muhly, Wolfgang Rihm, Judith Weir and Jörg Widmann and from 2013 the Hall has committed to premièring 13 new works per season. [13]
The biennial Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera International Song Competition (formerly the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition) was founded in 1997 and has run at the venue since then. After 20 years of support from The Kohn Foundation, the 2019 Competition was sponsored by Independent Opera at Sadler's Wells. Independent Opera's relationship with Wigmore Hall dates back 10 years to its first Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera Voice Fellowship awarded to bass Matthew Rose. The Preliminary Round, the Semi-Finals and Final are held at Wigmore Hall.
Sinc July 2020 the Hall has also hosted the triennial Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition (formerly The London International String Quartet Competition and initially the Portsmouth International String Quartet Competition). [16] Singers and pianists aged 33 or under from around the world are eligible.
The hall is a venue for broadcasting and recording. BBC Radio 3 transmits its lunchtime concert from Wigmore Hall every Monday during the season, which runs from September to July. Recent BBC Lunchtime Concerts have featured Benjamin Grosvenor, the Škampa Quartet, Christoph Denoth, Noriko Ogawa, Gautier Capuçon, Gabriela Montero, the ATOS Trio, Clara Mouriz, Mark Padmore and Yevgeny Sudbin. [17] A number of evening concerts are also broadcast live or recorded for later transmission on Sky Arts TV as well as being released by recording companies.
Wigmore Hall also publishes recordings of concerts by prominent artists on its own record label Wigmore Hall Live, receiving the special award Label of the Year in the 2011 Gramophone Awards. [18] The label entered the classical charts with a recital by the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, which has also been nominated for a Gramophone Award. Recent additions to the catalogue include recitals by the violinist Maxim Vengerov of works by Bach and Beethoven and baritone Roderick Williams's concert of works by Mahler, Korngold and Schumann, accompanied by the Austrian pianist Helmut Deutsch. [19]
Since 1994, Wigmore Hall's Learning programme has been giving people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities opportunities to take part in creative music making, engaging a broad and diverse audience through creative projects, concerts, workshops and online resources. Every year there are around 600 Learning events, with nearly 30,000 visits to the programme.
Wigmore Hall Learning collaborates with community, education, arts, health and social care organisations, working in partnership to engage people who might not otherwise have the opportunity to take part. The programme includes work with schools, including concerts, teacher training, projects with hospital schools and the innovative Partner Schools Programme, in which Wigmore Hall Learning works in partnership with schools and Music Education Hubs to co-produce activity over three years, creating a creative whole school plan for music.
Families are invited to the hall to take part in interactive workshops and concerts for families with babies, children in their early years and children aged 5+. Community partnerships include Music for Life (for people living with dementia and their families, friends and carers), projects with the Cardinal Hume Centre, which enable people to gain the skills they need to overcome poverty and homelessness, and activity with Solace Women's Aid, which supports women and children who have experienced domestic violence.
Pathways is a range of schemes and events which provides a platform for emerging artists, supporting the next generation of musicians and music leaders. This includes annual Trainee Music Leaders, Royal Academy of Music / Wigmore Hall Fellowship Ensemble and RPS / Wigmore Hall Apprentice Composer schemes, as well as Bechstein Sessions, a new series of informal performances which showcase emerging talent.
Behind the Music is a programme of study events including talks, lecture-recitals, masterclasses, study groups and Come and Sing days.
The Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the town of Aldeburgh, Suffolk and is centred on Snape Maltings Concert Hall.
The Belcea Quartet is a string quartet, formed in 1994, under the leadership of violinist Corina Belcea.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
The Sacconi Quartet is a UK-based classical music string quartet founded in 2001 by four graduates of the Royal College of Music, London, UK. The Quartet has achieved widespread recognition, having given recitals in leading British concert halls and at music festivals in Britain and across Europe. They have also won several major prizes in string quartet and chamber music competitions. The Quartet is named for the outstanding twentieth-century Italian violin maker and restorer Simone Sacconi, who wrote The Secrets of Stradivari a reference work for violin makers.
Madeleine Louise Mitchell MMus, ARCM, GRSM, FRSA is a British violinist who has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in over forty countries. She has a wide repertoire and is particularly known for commissioning and premiering new works and for promoting British music in concert and on disc.
The Pavel Haas Quartet is a Czech string quartet which was founded in 2002. Their first album with the second quartets of Haas and Janáček won the 2007 Gramophone Award for Chamber music. The Gramophone reviewer David Fanning described their playing as "streamlined but full-blooded". Their recording of the Dvořák String Quartets Op. 106 & 96 won the Gramophone Awards' most coveted "Recording of the Year" prize in 2011.
Felix Adrian Norman Salmond was an English cellist and cello teacher who achieved success in the UK and the US.
Huw Thomas Watkins is a British composer and pianist. Born in South Wales, he studied piano and composition at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where he received piano lessons from Peter Lawson. He then went on to read music at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and Alexander Goehr, and completed an MMus in composition at the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Julian Anderson. Huw Watkins was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, where he used to teach composition. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal College of Music.
Britten Sinfonia is a chamber orchestra ensemble based in Cambridge, UK. It was created in 1992, following an initiative from Eastern Arts and a number of key figures including Nicholas Cleobury, who recognised the need for an orchestra in the East of England. It is a flexible ensemble composed of chamber musicians in Europe. The players are freelance musicians who are employed on a project-by-project basis and the ensemble performs around 70 concerts per year and works with hundreds of people in the communities where the orchestra is resident.
The Stratton String Quartet was a British musical ensemble active during the 1930s and 1940s. They were specially associated with the performance of British music, of which they gave numerous premieres, and were a prominent feature in the wartime calendar of concerts at the National Gallery. After the War the group was re-founded as the Aeolian Quartet.
Julius Drake is an English pianist who works as a song recital accompanist and chamber musician.
Marthe Servine was a French-American composer and pianist, primarily known for her works for solo piano, and songs.
Michael Dussek is an English pianist specialising in chamber music and song accompaniment.
String Quartet No. 2 in C major, Op. 36, by English composer Benjamin Britten, was written in 1945. It was composed in Snape, Suffolk and London, and completed on 14 October. The first performance was by the Zorian Quartet in the Wigmore Hall, London on 21 November 1945, in a concert to mark the exact 250th anniversary of the death of English composer Henry Purcell (1659–95). The work was commissioned by and is dedicated to Mary Behrend, a patron of the arts; Britten donated most of his fee towards famine relief in India.
John Gilhooly,, OSI is a British and Irish arts administrator. He is currently artistic and executive director of Wigmore Hall.
Harry Waldo Warner was an English viola player and composer, one of the founding members of the London String Quartet and a several times Cobbett Competition winner for his chamber music.
Karel Janovický was a Czech composer, pianist, BBC producer and administrator who lived in the United Kingdom from 1950. He was one of the youngest of the group of European émigré composers who came to live and work in Britain during the 1930s and 1940s to avoid persecution at home.
Lena Wood,, was a British violist with the Birmingham Philharmonic String Orchestra and the Birmingham Ladies' String Quartet. She was a pupil of Lionel Tertis, performing and broadcasting with a number of ensembles from the 1920s to the 1950s.
Raymond Jeremy, FRAM, (1890-1969) was a British violist, known for his quartet playing, particularly the first performances of Edward Elgar's String Quartet and Piano Quintet. He was professor of violin and viola at the Royal Academy of Music in London and taught the violist Watson Forbes.
The Doric String Quartet is a string quartet based in the UK. It was formed in 1998. As of 2023, the members are Alex Redington and Ying Xue on violin, Hélène Clément on viola and John Myerscough on cello. Past members include Jonathan Stone, Simon Tandree and Chris Brown. In 2008, the quartet won first prize at the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition and second prize at the "Premio Paolo Borciani" International String Quartet Competition.
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