Wigmore Hall
Angela Hewitt, Wigmore Hall review - Scarlatti miniatures outshine Brahms behemothWednesday, 25 September 2024
If Angela Hewitt’s recital last night at the Wigmore Hall was a meal, it would have been two light, fresh – but nourishing – courses, followed by a big suetty pudding, splendidly cooked but sitting slightly heavy on the stomach. The delightful... Read more... |
Pavel Kolesnikov, Wigmore Hall review - unpredictable magicTuesday, 24 September 2024
All five finalists in the Leeds International Piano Competition, at which Pavel Kolesnikov was one of the jurors, should have been given tickets, transport and accommodation to hear his Wigmore recital the evening after the prizegiving. Not that... Read more... |
Beethoven Sonata Cycle 1, Boris Giltburg, Wigmore Hall review - running the gamutMonday, 16 September 2024
A happy, lucid and bright pianist, a forbidding Everest among piano sonatas: would Boris Giltburg follow a bewitching, ceaselessly engaging first half by rising to the challenge of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” - a title he suggests, in his series of... Read more... |
Murrihy, Martineau, Wigmore Hall review - poise, transformation and rainbow coloursThursday, 30 May 2024
Peerless among the constellation of Irish singers making waves around the world, mezzo Paula Murrihy first dazzled London as Ascanio in Terry Gilliam’s English National Opera production of Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini. Since then she’s become a major... Read more... |
Sphinx Organization, Wigmore Hall review - black performers and composers take centre stageMonday, 27 May 2024
Kudos to the Wigmore Hall for continuing to make efforts to diversify its roster of performers and repertoire. Last year I reviewed the Kaleidoscope Collective, and noted how the different profile of their players attracted a younger and less... Read more... |
Kolesnikov, Wigmore Hall review - celestial navigation through a cabinet of wondersThursday, 23 May 2024
Like his baggy white suit, pitched somewhere between Liberace and Colonel Sanders, Pavel Kolesnikov’s playing was spotless at the Wigmore Hall last night. It comprised two very different halves, the first a miscellany of apparently unrelated pieces... Read more... |
Dunedin Consort, Mulroy, Wigmore Hall review - songs of love old and newThursday, 16 May 2024
The sixteen voices of the Dunedin Consort raided the large store of music inspired by the Song of Songs and the sonnets of Petrarch in a sensual programme at the Wigmore Hall last night. Combining the very old and the very new it offered a range of... Read more... |
Ridout, Włoszczowska, Crawford, Lai, Posner, Wigmore Hall review - electrifying teamworkWednesday, 24 April 2024
Advice to young musicians, as given at several “how to market your career” seminars: don’t begin a biography with “one of the finest xxxs of his/her/their generation”. From my side, I’m allowed to use it occasionally: surely Timothy Ridout is the... Read more... |
Sabine Devieilhe, Mathieu Pordoy, Wigmore Hall review - enchantment in Mozart and StraussTuesday, 23 April 2024
Sabine Devieilhe, as with many other great sopranos, elicits much fan worship, with no less than three encores at her recent Wigmore Hall recital. In her native France, and in the rest of Europe, she has gathered ecstatic reviews for her performance... Read more... |
Bell, Perahia, ASMF Chamber Ensemble, Wigmore Hall review - joy in teamworkWednesday, 17 April 2024
All three works in the second of this week’s Neville Marriner centenary concerts from the ensemble he founded vindicated their intention to reign for ever and ever. Those very words as set by Handel in his “Hallelujah” Chorus were treated fugally by... Read more... |
Schubert Piano Sonatas 4, Paul Lewis, Wigmore Hall review - feverish and sometimes violentWednesday, 27 March 2024
“Death doesn’t scare me at all,” said my friend Christopher Hitchens during our last telephone conversation. “After all, it’s the only certainty in life. Dying, however, scares me shitless”.However hard one tries to remove these three final sonatas... Read more... |
Theresienstadt-Terezin 1941-1945, Nash Ensemble, Wigmore Hall review - memorial music of stunning impactTuesday, 12 March 2024
Towards the end of his book Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann deploys a cogent expression: “chasing history, before it disappears”.Last time the Nash Ensemble devoted a weekend here to music from the Terezín concentration camp, in 2010, there... Read more... |
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