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Men May 1901, the inaugural concert of Wigmore Hall began, of course, with God Save the King – a clarion call to the audience who, until a few months earlier, had been chanting for Queen Victoria. The program continued with an all-star ensemble including singer and piano virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni who played Beethoven and a violinist. Eugène Ysaè playing Bach unaccompanied. That night’s small celebration kicked off two days of celebrations to celebrate its 125th birthday, and when the national anthem left – delivered from the platform by soprano Louise Alder and pianist Joseph Middleton – it felt less like a past event than a celebration of what the place has been doing.
The concert was billed as a gala but it was smaller, shorter and smaller than it should have been, partly because of the live broadcast: no sarcastic speeches, just short links from Radio 3’s Ian Skelly filling us in on the history of the venue. The hall was first built in 1901 by Bechstein, the piano maker, whose showrooms were located just off Wigmore Street, and was designed as a place where audiences could hear the best pianists of the day demonstrate the company’s instruments.
German restrictions during the First World War meant that the hall was sold to Debenhams in 1916, and the former Bechstein Hall became, in 1917, Wigmore Hall; for some time the German song was sung vigorously in English.
Since then the venue has remained remarkably stable, continuing to host concerts during the worst days of the Second World War, and occasionally taking on the spirit of the 1960s – David Bowie performed here twice during his early career, wearing a space suit – and, to this day, solving the current financial crisis facing all UK art centers. All the while Wigmore continues to provide a London home for anyone in the world of solo recordings, chamber music and music.
Filling Busoni’s role early in Monday’s event was Thomas Adès, who played the new piano piece 2023 guitar Vesper (by Henry Purcell), fascinatingly curved and polished, twisting and projecting Purcell’s Evening Hymn as if in a small hall of glass.
Then, as in 1901, there was also Beethoven’s piano sonata Op 109, in E major: Adès put his own stamp on it, hard on the drama if it had no musical meaning, the high notes ringing out over sweet pianissimos. Alder and Middleton came back with three Schubert songs, ending with Erlkönig, which seemed like a mini-opera, with Alder introducing the complexities and Middleton creating something electronic on the notes repeating with difficulty in the piano part.
Filling Ysaÿe’s shoes was Alina Ibragimova, who played the second half of Bach’s first Partita for solo violin, in B minor, with such freshness, precision and beauty that it seemed a shame we didn’t get more. He was joined by a pianist Cédric Tiberghien to Beethoven’s Romance in G – a quiet moment for Tiberghien between two powerful sections of Brahms’s lavishly virtuosic Paganini Variations, which made up the second half of the concert. Not many pianists take on this work, which is more self-assured than the Brahms we know and love, but Tiberghien brought an old-school Busoni look to his performance, his composure and control making the work a delight.
