Wigmore Hall 🎶🎹🏛

The origins

London has a wonderful concentration of venues with excellent acoustics for classical music concerts of all kinds. My favourites are the smaller and more intimate ones, like Wigmore Hall, perfect for chamber music, with a varied programme of world-class concerts every day of the week. Originally called Bechstein Hall, after the renowned piano maker, who had a showroom next door, and commissioned the building in the late 19th century. The concert hall was inaugurated in 1901, closed in 1914 and reopened after the First World War with its current name and a new ownership. Since then it has hosted many great composers and performers who have loved this place and its incredible concert programs, including Benjamin Britten, Arthur Rubinstein and Andres Segovia.

A pleasant and functional design

The building was conceived in a neo-Renaissance style, using alabaster and marble walls, which decorate a flat and rectangular stalls, with a small raised stage, surmounted by a dome depicting the Soul of Music, the work of the sculptor Frank Lynn Jenkins. The hall is considered one of the best for acoustics in Europe, especially for classical chamber music. The current capacity of the room, distributed between the stalls and the smaller balcony, is 545 seats. There are two bars and a restaurant in the basement, under the main auditorium.

The International competitions

The Wigmore Hall / Independent Opera International Song Competition has been held at the concert hall for 15 years every other year, as has, more recently, the three-year Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition. Since its founding in 1997, the Biennial Competition has grown in status and prestige and continues to attract singers and pianists from all over the world, aged 33 and under, eager to pursue important recital careers. The preliminary round, semifinals and final take place at Wigmore Hall.