Michael Tanner says that the Wigmore Hall, celebrating its 110th birthday, combines Edwardian grandeur with contemporary appeal
The Wigmore Hall is so expert in advertising itself with taste and discretion that it manages to give the impression, simultaneously, of belonging to a previous era and thus having all the charm of the Edwardian age at its most appealing, while also showing its adaptability to contemporary technology and, at least as important, to contemporary music. Even its website contrives to have a winningly traditional air, while of course being completely up-to-date. Certainly the building itself, especially as you approach it, evokes the age in which it was constructed, 110 years ago, with its pointed glass canopy and its lengthy, narrow, mahogany-lined entrance hall. It was the Bechstein Hall, but in the fervour of anti-German feeling induced by the first world war it was sold off to Debenhams and the name was changed. I’ve wondered why it has never changed back, ‘Bechstein’ being so powerful a musical signifier, while ‘Wigmore’ still sounds determinedly non-artistic.
When, decades ago, I first realised that it was the musical venue in London where I most liked to be, the Wigmore alternated between performances by celebrated instrumentalists, singers and chamber groups, and debut recitals by young unknowns, who hired the place for the evening. When I recently went to the Hall to talk to its chief executive, John Gilhooly, he made it clear that the latter are no longer a feature of the Wigmore’s planning. Only well-known and at least comparatively established figures appear there now, with the odd exception of a blazing new talent like Benjamin Grosvenor, the sensational young pianist who is also appearing at the Proms; and it is not up for hiring as it was in the old days.
Gilhooly is a youthful, highly energetic Irishman, a singer with an immense appetite for music — he goes to at least 200 of the Hall’s 400 annual concerts, and is a familiar figure at musical events elsewhere — and with strong ideas about what kind of venue the Wigmore needs to be. Clearly he is succeeding in implementing his ideas: in the last half-dozen years annual attendance at concerts has increased from 120,000 to 180,000, and the reason for that is plain — intransigent pursuit of the best, with no concessions to fashion or ‘accessibility’.
If you look through the list of concerts for the current three-month period, you see, among others, the names of András Schiff, Mikhail Rudy, Thomas Quasthoff, Iestyn Davies, Paul Lewis, Stephen Hough, the Belcea Quartet, Stephen Kovacevich, the Artemis Quartet, the Takács Quartet, Andreas Scholl, the Škampa Quartet, Mark Padmore, Steven Isserlis, Jordi Savall, Elisabeth Leonskaja, the Jerusalem Quartet, Thomas Adès and Joshua Bell. A list like that is unimaginable in the world of opera or orchestral concerts, except for a limited period, as at the Proms. But the Wigmore keeps it up all the year round.
As Gilhooly acknowledges, running such an enterprise is both strenuous and enviable. The number of great string quartets playing at present is far greater than ever before, and the repertoire on which they have to draw is immense too. Compared with the exertions, on the part of many people, required to stage an opera or to put on an orchestral concert, organising a concert by a soloist or small ensemble is straightforward. And the repertoire itself — just browse through the Wigmore brochure for 2011–2012 — which is there to be drawn on is enormous. Whereas to make ends meet an opera house has mainly to mount a handful of pieces by half a dozen composers, and large concert halls aren’t all that much better placed for orchestral concerts, by contrast a recital hall seating about 500 is safe in putting on a programme by an established quartet in which there is a mixture of familiar and fairly recondite pieces — such as, to take an example at random, the Zehetmair Quartet playing Schubert’s great last String Quartet in G, and Hindemith’s Fifth Quartet.
Another of the great appeals of the Wigmore is that it can put on a lunchtime or mid-morning concert which lasts an hour, and attract its faithful regulars as well as curious passers-by. I think, too, that the unusual closeness of the performers to the audience not only encourages concentration, it also means that unfamiliar pieces have a direct impact which is just what is needed for them to seem less daunting.
I asked Gilhooly whether he was interested in changing the image of the Wigmore Hall regular, and not surprisingly got an equivocal answer. Those of us who, for whatever reason, can’t get to the Hall as often as we would like, still receive, on the occasions when we do go, an impression of a crowd — given the shape and dimensions of the Hall itself, its very elaborate underground catering arrangements, and its tubular entry, the crowd effect is inevitable — of elderly, well-placed civil servants and the like. Gilhooly of course wants to appeal to a wider audience, as well as providing his core public with what they expect. To my surprise, his too, he tells me that by far the most popular concerts with young audiences are choral performances. So in the coming season there is a Sacred Music Series in which music by Byrd and his contemporaries is being given by the Cardinall’s Musick and Stile Antico, six concerts between October and May, with three study group days of three hours.
There are lots of series or clusters of concerts, which have a strong appeal for many people, and the expected number of celebrations of anniversaries, as well as the Bostridge Project, for devotees of that unique performer. His idea has been ‘to gather together period instruments and modern instruments in a single concert’ and he has gathered a distinguished group of colleagues to realise his vision. By the time I had spent 50 minutes with John Gilhooly and studied the Wigmore brochure, I felt, as many music lovers would, that a ‘Wigmore residency’ for a year, more or less living in the place, was the only thing that I really wanted.
BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES/ben ealovega
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