Growing old gracefully | 25 June 2011

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.