2019 /20 SEASON PREVIEW ‘ Wigmore Hall adroitly moves forward while appearing to remain the same, this year introducing concert live streams.’ Fiona Maddocks, The Observer, December 2018 ‘ The world’s greatest chamber music venue.’ Richard Morrison, The Times, January 2019 2 • SEASON PREVIEW It has been a huge joy and privilege to put the 2019/20 Season together. I am convinced that it is one of our strongest ever. We celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth throughout the year, with a very special opening weekend festival forged around perspectives on Beethoven; everything from music and disability and hearing loss, to John Gilhooly the way composers past and present © Benjamin Ealovega have treated Beethoven’s legacy. Many living composers join us throughout the season, and I am particularly delighted to welcome the pianist and composer, innovator, improviser and Harvard Professor, Vijay Iyer. I invited him to represent the idea of music without borders throughout this very special season. Brahms, Britten and Bach also dominate the season, as well as the Hall welcoming the world’s best song recitalists and pianists. We particularly look forward to recitals from Sir Bryn Terfel, Anna Caterina Antonacci, Susan Graham, Thomas Hampson, Philippe Jaroussky, Marianne Crebassa and the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, who will perform both a solo recital and a concert with Musicians from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. I am very grateful to all our donors for their generosity and encouragement. Donations from our supporters are integral to maintaining the quality and scope of everything we present here, and I hope that we can count on you once again to be part of this ‘ The world’s greatest chamber music venue.’ wonderful new season. Richard Morrison, The Times, January 2019 I look forward to welcoming you during the year ahead. SEASON PREVIEW • 3 Beethoven Born in 1770 into an age of political turmoil and social unrest, Beethoven wrote music marked by the spirit of revolution. Wigmore Hall’s season-long exploration of the composer’s timeless art (covering all of his instrumental and chamber works) is certain to reveal fresh insights, first and foremost in a special opening weekend festival. Across ten concerts in just two days, the festival places Beethoven in context through the works of his antecedents, his direct successors and those in the twentieth century who still felt his influence.Steven Isserlis and Robert Levin open the festival with a selection of Beethoven’s cello sonatas and variations, and they are followed by, among others, Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien, the Škampa Quartet, Elisabeth Leonskaja in the final three piano sonatas, and the groundbreaking chamber ensemble O/Modernt. Elisabeth Leonskaja Alina Ibragimova Jonathan Biss © Marco Borggreve © Eva Vermandel © Benjamin Ealovega Special Priority Booking for the Opening Weekend of the Beethoven Festival (Saturday 14 – Sunday 15 September) will be available to Friends of Wigmore Hall in late February 2019. Further information will follow soon. 4 • SEASON PREVIEW wigmore-hall.org.uk Vijay Iyer © Jimmy Katz As a musician and educator, Vijay Iyer stands for music made without borders. Wigmore Hall’s Composer in Residence, hailed by The Guardian as ‘one of the world’s most inventive new-generation jazz pianists’, will contemplate music’s presence in all human cultures from prehistory to the digital age. He is set to complement the Hall’s Beethoven programme by probing the nature of improvisation and examining humankind’s innate musicality. Oxford-based anthropologist Belcea Quartet © Marco Borggreve and musician Professor Georgina Born and the Aurora Orchestra are ready to join Iyer’s Throughout the season, further Beethoven highlights include Jonathan Biss, James Ehnes contemplations ‘On Musicality’. and Miklós Perényi in respective surveys of the composer’s complete piano, violin, and cello sonatas; the complete string quartets from the Belcea Quartet; the complete piano trios from James Ehnes © Benjamin Ealovega the Trio Shaham Erez Wallfisch; and the complete string trios from Jean-Guihen Queyras, Daniel Sepec and Tabea Zimmermann. Cédric Tiberghien will begin a two-season series of Beethoven’s piano variations, and Philippe Cassard and Cédric Pescia will perform Liszt’s arrangement of the Ninth Symphony for two pianos, while there are red-letter Beethoven dates too, from Sir András Schiff, Sir Simon Keenlyside, Michael Collins, Leonidas Kavakos and Matthias Goerne. This festival is being made possible in part by a generous grant from the Fondation Hoffmann, with additional funding from members of our Beethoven Circle. For more information on the Beethoven Circle and to become involved with this major celebration, please contact Isabel Harvey-Kelly at [email protected] or call 020 7258 8226. Suggested annual donation of £2,500 SEASON PREVIEW • 5 Brahms Brahms is in the Wigmore Hall spotlight next season with a programme built around the Castalian String Quartet, fast-rising stars and recipient of the 2018 Merito String Quartet Award and Valentin Erben Prize. The Quartet launches the Hall’s Brahms Series in partnership with violist Isabel Charisius and cellist Ursula Smith, performing two works taken from opposite ends of the composer’s career – the String Sextet in B flat Op. 18 and the elegiac String Quintet in G Op. 111. The Castalian Quartet returns later in the season to explore Brahms’s complete string quartets in company with his works for five and six strings and compositions by his friend and mentor, Robert Schumann. Musicologist Katy Hamilton will lead study events throughout the season relating to her major new book on Brahms, co-edited with Natasha Loges and published in 2019. Jonathan Plowright Castalian String Quartet © Diane Shaw © Kaupo Kikkas 6 • SEASON PREVIEW wigmore-hall.org.uk Stephen Hough Vienna Piano Trio © Sim Canetty-Clarke © Nancy Horowitz Brahms’s chamber music is also at the centre of Stephen Hough’s 2019/20 Season residency, which spans five concerts, and he joins Michael Collins for Brahms’s two clarinet sonatas in a concert which also includes the clarinet quintet with the Castalian String Quartet. Other collaborations include performances with Renaud Capuçon, Steven Isserlis and Andrei Ioniţă. The striking tonal richness of Brahms’s chamber music can also be heard in four concerts from the Vienna Piano Trio, embracing everything from his cello sonatas and three piano trios to the Horn Trio and Clarinet Trio, and Brahms’s artistic Michael Collins passions and musical influences surface © Benjamin Ealovega again when pianist Jonathan Plowright concludes his Brahms Plus series. SEASON PREVIEW • 7 Britten Wigmore Hall played a decisive part in Benjamin Britten’s development. In the 1930s, it staged the first performances of several chamber pieces and the UK première of the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. During the following decade, the Hall secured its place in the history of Britten when it hosted the world premières of Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, the Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, the Second String Quartet and The Holy Sonnets of John Donne. Wigmore Hall reflects on Britten’s legacy in nine concerts and related Learning events during 2019/20. The season opens on 13 September with a Britten gala featuring Louise Alder, Christine Rice, Allan Clayton, Christopher Maltman and James Baillieu. Sophie Bevan Louise Alder Christine Rice © Sussie Ahlburg © Gerard Collett © Patricia Taylor 8 • SEASON PREVIEW wigmore-hall.org.uk This landmark series includes an evening of Britten’s choral music from Vox Luminis and performances of the composer’s complete songs with piano. A starry line-up of artists is set to explore the Canticles, an irresistible programme to be streamed live on Wigmore Hall’s website, while Allan Clayton crowns the series with a late-night date with Britten’s seductive Cabaret Songs. Doric String Quartet © George Garnier Allan Clayton © Sim Canetty-Clarke It continues with two anniversary concerts, the first celebrating the composer’s birthday (also St Cecilia’s Day), the second commemorating his death: the Doric String Quartet marks Britten’s birthday with an evening comprising the three string quartets, and the Aurora Orchestra and conductor Ryan Wigglesworth are joined on 4 December by Allan Clayton in the Serenade and by Sophie Bevan in Les Illuminations. SEASON PREVIEW • 9 Early Music & Baroque Rachel Podger © Theresa Pewal Wigmore Hall underlines its commitment to Early Music in 2019/20 with a season rich in world-class performers and programmes. Angela Hewitt concludes her Bach Odyssey while Mahan Esfahani continues his revelatory Bach Harpsichord series with three concerts. The strength of the Hall’s Early Music Series is reflected in the scope and diversity of its residencies, with three concerts from L’Arpeggiata and four from Ensemble Marsyas, virtuoso performers of eighteenth-century music for wind instruments, who will mark the New Year with a musical feast for Hogmanay. One of the great names in period-instrument performance, Concentus Musicus Wien, comes to Wigmore Hall for the first time, joining a glittering array of performers and ensembles that includes Jordi Savall, The Sixteen, Orfeo 55 and Nathalie Stutzmann, Le Concert d’Astrée and Emmanuelle Haïm, La Serenissima and Adrian Chandler, Fretwork, Tenebrae, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, and Collegium Vocale Gent. The Hall will also Ensemble Marsyas resound to the life-affirming work ofRachel © David Barbour Podger, subject of a 2019/20 artist residency spanning three all-Bach evening concerts and three Sunday Morning Concerts devoted to Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin. Wigmore Hall’s continually expanding Early Music Series is made possible by the generous contribution of members of our Early Music and Baroque Circle. If you would like to help us promote the performance of this very special repertoire at the Hall, and receive additional insight through special events throughout the season, please contact Isabel Harvey-Kelly at [email protected] or call 020 7258 8226 for further information about the Circle.