Wigmore Hall
Siglo de Oro, Spinacino Consort, Allies, Wigmore Hall review - a fun 17th century musical ChristmasSaturday, 23 December 2023The Wigmore Hall, the high church of Beethoven and Brahms, hosted something less elevated last night: a programme called “Hey for Christmas” presented by vocal ensemble Siglo de Oro and period instrument band Spinacino. The conceit was of recreating... Read more... |
Jansen, Ridout, Blendulf, Kozhukhin, Wigmore Hall review - Brahms in excelsisSaturday, 23 December 2023Reviewing, they say, never gets easier. How can one possibly describe chamber music playing as good, as stupendously memorable, as last night’s all-Brahms programme from Dutch violinist Janine Jansen, English violist Timothy Ridout, Swedish cellist... Read more... |
London Handel Players, Butterfield, Wigmore Hall review - Bach with bite for ChristmasTuesday, 19 December 2023We think of the Wigmore Hall as a venue for intimate revelations, but in the right hands it can feel like a stadium. Last night’s all-Bach programme of festive music from the London Handel Players managed to embrace both moods.On a bill that began... Read more... |
Mariam Batsashvili, Wigmore Hall review - spectacular pianism, with a sense of funWednesday, 13 December 2023For a small nation, with a population not quite comparable to Scotland’s, Georgia has for long packed a mighty musical punch. Any visitor will know the soul-wrenching power of its choral polyphony, but a post-Soviet generation of classical soloists... Read more... |
Paul Lewis, Wigmore Hall review - Schubert sonatas revisitedWednesday, 06 December 2023A decade has passed since Paul Lewis concluded an endeavour of a kind never previously undertaken: to perform, over two and a half years and across four continents, every work Schubert wrote for piano between 1822, the year he was diagnosed with... Read more... |
Grosvenor, Park, Ridout, Soltani, Wigmore Hall review - chamber music supergroup in perfect accordWednesday, 29 November 2023Frank Bridge’s Phantasie Piano Quartet was astutely described by his student Benjamin Britten as “Brahms tempered with Fauré”, so it made a lot of sense to programme it alongside the first piano quartets of those other composers. A “supergroup” of... Read more... |
Louise Alder & Friends, Wigmore Hall review - magic carpet rides with soprano, strings and woodwindMonday, 27 November 2023Sometimes all the stars align in musical performance. There’s no soprano more alive to the expression of musical joy and rapture than Louise Alder, no composer more levitational in his strange later adventures than Fauré, no instrumentalists strings... Read more... |
Schiff, Höbarth, Coin, Wigmore Hall review - Schubert minus transcendenceThursday, 26 October 2023A full Wigmore Hall always feels special. Formerly we saw a board with the words “HOUSE FULL” on it, in large, bright red capital letters at the entrance. If we had tickets back then, we knew how lucky we were. These days, the 552-seater hall gets... Read more... |
Brahms Piano Sonatas, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Wigmore Hall review - when giants meetMonday, 18 September 2023To master even one of Brahms’s three early sonatas is a colossal task for any pianist. To play them all with towering authority in a single concert takes a phenomenon. Elisabeth Leonskaja seems just that more than ever in her late 70s; not only is... Read more... |
Denk, Danish String Quartet, Wigmore Hall review - metaphysical strings, the piano as chameleonSaturday, 16 September 2023Few pianists manage stylistic perfection in both Mozart and Ligeti, but to Jeremy Denk it seems to come naturally. We should have heard the riveting contrasts in quick first-half succession, but European air traffic control had wasted much of the... Read more... |
Hahn, Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, Wigmore Hall review - Americana old and newWednesday, 21 June 2023Artist-in-Residence at the Wigmore Hall Hilary Hahn brought her residency to an end with a collaboration with the exciting Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, a notably youthful and ethnically diverse group, who brought with them a notably more... Read more... |
Bocheng Wang, Wigmore Hall review - extraordinary agility and technical fluidityThursday, 15 June 2023Rachmaninov had his doubts about his Variations on a Theme of Corelli. He confided to Medtner that when he performed them, “I was guided by the coughing of the audience. Whenever the coughing increased, I would skip the next variation. Whenever... Read more... |